Season of the (Feminist) Witch

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I’m going out to left field today. This post relates to a book I’d love to write, but really isn’t about books or writing. Every so often I need to write about something else.

This morning I felt the first cool kiss of autumn in the air. My favorite season is here. This is the time of year I am happier, more energetic and more productive than any other.

Plus, we’re entering the season of the witch. I’m not a skull and bones kind of Halloween girl. I’m a witches and black cats and spells, kind of girl.

But that’s not the only reason I’ve had witches on the brain lately. A few days ago I saw an ad on Facebook asking “Are you struggling with witchcraft?” *cue eye roll* It was trying to get you to sign up for some kind of online coven. (I have a whole other rant about opportunists and religion but that’s for another day.)  That made me realize something else: witchcraft is back in vogue!

And there’s a reason for that–it’s linked to feminism. Go with me on this.

I came of age in the mid-to-late 90s when all things witchy were cool:

• Pop Culture– Goth fashion, long black or velvet dresses. People began wearing pentacles in public (I am not a fan of that symbol, but no worries if you are. I prefer the triquetra.) New Age stores were everywhere.
• TV – Charmed, Sabrina the Teenage Witch, Buffy the Vampire Slayer 
• Movies – The Craft, Hocus Pocus, The Crucible (with Winona Ryder), Practical Magic
• Books – This was heaven. Borders had a whole section on Wicca. Hundreds of books. It was amazing. I probably owned at least 50 myself during this time.

That was during the third wave of feminism, when Girl Power and Lilith Fair was all the rage. Women were fighting for reproductive rights, LGBT rights (there was no QIA at that point), intersectional recognition in feminism, against gender violence and more.

Then things quieted down in the 2000s as both witchcraft and feminism began to be viewed as passe. Women began saying feminism was no longer needed and maybe even dead.

But suddenly a few years ago (long about 2015 or 2016) witchcraft began to creep back into pop culture, right along with a fourth wave of feminism that I would argue began with the 2016 presidential election (I really, really want to write a book about that!)

Suddenly you have a repeat of the 90s (sometimes way too literally):

• Pop Culture– “Basic Witch,” a really commercial version of witchcraft that uses its trappings (crystals, sage, “spells”- all packaged in book or a monthly subscription box!) to appeal to the yoga moms and millennials. (This is so NOT real witchcraft.) And most New Age stores have moved online.
• TV/Streaming – Reboots of Charmed and Sabrina the Teenage Witch (as Chilling Adventures of Sabrina), American Horror Story: Coven
• Books – The oldies but goodies written by Starhawk, Doreen Valentine, Silver RavenWolf, Raven Grimassi and others are still around. But now you also have Basic Witch, 5-Minute Magic for Modern Wiccans and other books looking to “modernize” the craft.

It’s interesting that now most of this is darker, especially the reboots. But so is our culture, with its hatred and bigotry (exactly the opposite of what most witchcraft is about, at least the kinds that call themselves white or green). And frankly, women have a lot more to fight for this time around: our reproductive rights are being threatened more than ever and we’re taken even less seriously on issues of sexual violence – just look at the appointment of Judge Cavanaugh to the Supreme Court, the high profile rape cases like Brock Turner, and the police who got probation a few days ago for raping a woman they had drugged and detained. Women’s rights are sliding backwards again and the patriarchy is trying to reassert itself. And at the same time we find a rise in the popularity of witchcraft.

All of this makes sense, if you think about it. Witches, or at least the women accused of witchcraft in the US and Europe, have always been the resistance. They often lived alone, which in itself was bucking the system because it kept them out of the control of men. They had power in their independence and in the healing arts (herbs, midwifery, etc.) that they provided the community. People feared their magic and spells, regardless of whether or not any were ever cast. They were the original “nasty” women.

One could argue that the Spiritualism trend of the 1800s and early 1900s, which gave women to the ability to speak in public for the first time and tangentially led to the suffrage movement, was the witchcraft of the first wave of feminism. (God I want to write a book about this!)

After centuries of being “forced” underground, modern Wicca (one of the most well-known forms of witchcraft in the US) was founded in 1954 by Gerald Gardner, who claimed it was an unbroken continuation of the ancient forbidden practices. (Believe what you will about that. I think it is BS.) It grew in popularity over the next twenty years and had it’s first public heyday in the late 70s and 80s. (Think Stevie Nicks in the music world, The Mists of Avalon for a literary example and Teen Witch for a movie example.)

Not coincidentally, this was during the second wave of feminism, when women were beginning to enter the workforce for the first time and demand their rights (abortion legalization, equal pay, an end to sexual harassment, etc.) equal to their male counterparts.

We saw this pattern repeat in the 90s and its happening again now. So it seems that in times of resistance, we as women naturally seek to copy our fore-mothers and seek solace and power in witchcraft, which grants us equality with (and in some forms of Wicca, dominance over) men.

Now, of course, not all women are witches, by far. Christianity is still far more popular. (Everyone has a right to their own beliefs, whatever they may be.) And there is still a great fear and hatred of anything pagan by many people. I just think the correlation is interesting.

And since this is a blog about books and writing, here’s a list of my favorite fictional witchy books:

• A Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness
• The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane by Katherine Howe
• The Daughters of Temperance Hobbs by Kathrine Howe
• Kim Harrison’s whole Hallows series.

And our own Spellbound Scribe Shauna Granger has her Elemental series and Melinda Kavanaugh series. Happy witchy reading!

Please don’t ask about my personal beliefs. Those are my business and honestly a very, very long and complex answer. I’ve studied witchcraft for years from a scholarly perspective, so my true beliefs may not be what you expect. But then again they may. 😉

Cuppa Fate: The Dubious Art of Reading Tea Leaves

Anyone who knows me know I’m a tea-fiend. When I’m writing, I mainline a variety of teas just to keep going. My husband and I bought ourselves an electric kettle for Christmas and then treated ourselves to a variety of loose-leaf Adagio teas. (Yes, in Lord of the Rings fan-blends… I’m a special breed of nerd.) If you want to attract a wild Kristin out in the world, coffee won’t do the trick, but waft the steam from your finest Earl Grey, and soon she’ll be eating out of your hand.

So when my birthday rolled around, my best friend gave me as a sort of birthday stocking-stuffer a copy of Little Giant Encylopedia: Tea Leaf Reading. I was thrilled. My experience with tea leaf reading extends only to reading about it with Harry Potter, and now I have a pocket guide to help me get started.

Since I’m a novice tasseomancer, just like Harry and Ron, and I’m assuming you are too, I thought we could all walk through this process together. You’ll need a cuppa tea, of course, but not just any cup: try to find a wide-bottom cup, preferably white or at least pale in color. And you’ll need loose-leaf tea—correctly brewed, of course.

Go ahead, make your cup. I’ll wait. *sips tea*

According to the book, once you have your tea you should drink it until there’s about a teaspoon left. Hold the cup in your left hand, swirl the dregs three times in a clockwise direction, and then very carefully upend the cup on a saucer to let it drain. Pick it up with your right hand (without disturbing the pattern the leaves have made), open your mind, and see what you can see.

Now, if you’re like me, you’ll make a huge mess the first time you try this. Don’t leave a teaspoon of liquid in the cup: drink until you have nothing but sludge, or you will find yourself hastily mopping up tea with a bunch of Kleenex and wind up with most of your tea leaves in the saucer.

Perhaps I should have just read my saucer… though it seems ill-omened to read the future in one’s giant mess.

Assuming you do in fact have some tea leaves left in your cup, rotate the image until it makes sense and you see something. Consider what you see, and think of it fairly abstractly, like finding shapes in the clouds. You’re not going to see the tea-equivalent of Da Vinci’s sketches in your cup (probably), so, erm, try to clear your third eye and look into the beyond.

It may help to do this in silence, and it will certainly NOT help if a friend asks if your reading foretells forthcoming dog poop. Excessive noise and poo-related questions may (*ahem*) block your ability to read the leaves. So give it a go, and try to concentrate.

In my case, I saw pyramids and flying birds.

Pyramids and flying birds. Hey, it’s my cup, I’ll see what I see!

The book tells me pyramids indicate “attainment to fame, honor, and wealth.” Sweet. And birds generally foreshadow happiness and joyful tidings, while a single bird flying means speedy news or emails. So I will soon be receiving good news that may lead to fame, honor, and/or wealth. Very nice!

Tea-soaked Kleenex and poop-questions aside, that’s not a bad first reading, if I do say so myself.

 So, are you reading to get started reading your own leaves? Here are a few basic shapes to get you started:

Square: may indicate perplexity and dismay, or some forthcoming embarrassing situation

Circle: money, presents, an engagement, faithful friends

Flowers: good fortune, happiness, love, marriage, spending time with a large circle of friends

Initials: may indicate initials of someone you know, or a place you may visit

Book: an open book may indicate a desire for information and an inquisitive mind, while a closed book may indicate expectancy

Good luck to you, friends! I’m going to go stare at my inbox now and wait for my forthcoming wealth and fame. (That’s how wealth and fame is acquired, right? By sitting and waiting?) Cheers!

Story In The Round – Part 5

I wanted to run to her. My bare feet stuck to the ground, a pebble digging into my heel.

I didn’t move away to dislodge the pebble. Its round hardness against my weight reminded me that I was not dreaming, that I was not tucked away in bed. Danny was really gone, and in front of me stood…my mother.

My mother who was many years dead.

The words that had cluttered my heart since her death tripped over one another on the way to my lips until when I opened my mouth, no sound came out.

“Aideen,” she said. Her glowing form moved toward me. Fireflies winked behind her as if drawn to her radiance.

Beneath the glow, I saw the gentle curve of her arms. Her eyes stood out, green and bright as they ever were in life. Instead of the twinkle they used to hold, though, their depth was shrouded in darkness.

I took a step back. The pebble stuck to my heel. “How are you here?”

The words left my lips at only a sliver above a whisper and disappeared into the air before I could be sure I’d really spoken.

“I don’t have much time,” she said. Her gaze flickered up the hill where the bonfire burned like a hungry star. For a moment, I thought I saw a shadow of wistful longing.

I waited for her answer, a thousand questions lining up behind my silence. Not much time — what was that supposed to mean? How was she here? No matter how thin the veil or how holy the day, the dead couldn’t just pop in without great need.

My thoughts shifted to Danny. “Why did you come?”

That she would come now, now when Danny had vanished into the Solstice night after warning me about the very fae who would spirit him away — it bemused and discomfited where years ago I would have felt only relief. My voice grew stronger in her silence. “Why did you come?”

She reached out one still-glowing hand, almost incandescent in the darkness of the night. My mother’s fingertips trailed on empty air, the distance between us more than two feet of open space.

“I needed to tell you…” she trailed off, eyes on a firefly that guttered green-gold in front of her face. She frowned, turned her head as if distracted by something I couldn’t hear.

“What did you need to tell me?” I closed my eyes. I couldn’t look at her. This confused spirit, so different than the effulgent woman who had floated on air itself on a Solstice night so long ago.

Opening my eyes once more, I half-expected for her to be gone, blown away on the breeze, leaving only a wake of fireflies to remind me that she’d ever existed.

“I needed to tell you…” My mother’s gaze focused in on my face, the darkness heavy as the depths of a cavern behind the green. “You can’t save Danny, Aideen. You’ll never save him.”

The night swallowed her glow.

***

You can see the earlier parts of this story here:

Part I
Part II
Part III
Part IV

Story in the Round – PART 2

I could feel the smoke warming my lungs and tickling my heart, seducing things from the depths of my soul that had not stirred in the last decade. Magic does that—it whispers promises of ease and power to us, makes us think we can be more than we are.

And on the Solstice, sometimes it speaks the truth. Things shift on a solstice, and it’s only natural that we follow the same pattern.

Even as I followed Danny reluctantly, I could feel the magic changing me. I could feel it lightening my steps, and I thought, against my will, of my mother floating over the earth, literally high on her power. The sticky heat on my skin turned cold, clammy, but the beat of the drums compelled me onward.

Outside the circle, I put my bag down on the grass beside Danny’s. He turned to me, his brown eyes glowing with the heat of the power now coursing through him, and offered me his hand. Behind him, the dancers swirled in a sun-pattern, opening a gateway for the power, even as the drumming grew ever louder. Velvet darkness crept across the sky, and when night fell, the magic would really take over.

Driven by the force of the dance, I put my hand in Danny’s. More heat caught fire, this time our own, and he pulled me into the circle of dancers. My body fell into a rhythm I knew in my bones as my heart started beating to the cadence of the drums. Danny knew the steps; the dance was something greater than us, as much a part of the summer night as the stars above and the fireflies skirting the woods. It made us a part of the night, too, our heat and sweat blending into the moisture of the night.

I noticed the stones only after we had done two circuits of the fire. Round and white, they would be nondescript if they were not so strangely placed, close to the fire as if they had been casually cast aside, but so close to the dancers that I had to wonder.

They said, after my mother died, that she had reached too deeply into the well of magical power that summer night so many years ago. But things reach out as much as we reach in, and small gateways as well as large open on solstice nights. I remembered what Danny said about fairies and wraiths, and I felt a spear of icy fear pierce the warm veil of the summer night.

We whirled past the stones, and I wondered if they had grown from the ground there, or if someone had placed them. They glowed amber in the firelight, pulsing in the flickering light as if they were alive. While the rest of us danced to the drums, the soul of these stones moved to another music, something none of the rest of us could hear.

When I saw a man and a woman step from the darkness between the stones, their eyes feral in the firelight, I stumbled.

Story in the Round – PART 1

Today we are beginning a new segments of posts, a very creative journey together, namely: A Story in the Round. Today I start the story, the first 500 words  of the introduction, and then leave off for the next Scribe to pick up. We’ll each add to the story until it comes to its natural conclusion. We’re not discussing where we each want to see where the story will go or what characters should arrive or do or whatever, it will be as much of a surprise to us as it will be to you, dear reader. So! Enjoy!

Southern summers were sticky, hot, and fierce. They held the kind of wet heat that you could never really prepare for. Short hair and short shorts didn’t do much to help, but I tried anyway. Now, walking through the field, the grass tickled my dewy skin, scratching and tickling all at once.

I hefted my backpack higher up on one shoulder, as I trudged up the hill, skirting around the fireflies that drifted just above the ground. The bonfire was tonight, and the drum circle. People would dance and sing and light the fire to breathe in the healing smoke. A new level of heat would be added to the night. The last time I’d danced around the bonfire my mother had been alive. The magic poured from her as she danced to the rhythm of the drums, her scarves swirling around her like a kaleidoscope come to life. Her bare feet skimmed the grass and for a moment, my ten-year-old self believed she was flying.

She died six months later – right before Winter Solstice. It was like some cruel cosmic joke.

I lost my magic with the death of my mother. How could magic be real if someone as beautiful and wonderful as my mother could die? Especially if I couldn’t bring her back, no matter how many spells I tried.

My father said she didn’t want to come back – that she would have found peace and moved on. And so should I. So, I walked away from magic, since it had obviously abandoned me.

Ten years later, I stood on top of that hill, and looked down at the celebration already started. The ground vibrated with the beat of the drums. The breeze carried voices back to me. The song was in a language I didn’t know, but was somehow familiar. There was power in those words and that power touched me, made my blood rush in my ears and pulled at my body to run to it.

“You ready for this?” Danny asked as he came up alongside me. I turned to look at him, pulling my eyes away from the celebration at the bottom of the valley. His brown eyes were alive with excitement. The power of the gathering was already filling him. It wasn’t filling me, not yet, but when I looked into his eyes, saw them alight with life and power, I knew I wanted to feel that too.

“I think so,” I finally answered with a strained smile.

“Then let’s go.” Danny nudged me with an elbow before starting down the slope leading to the bottom of the hill. “Oh,” he said over his shoulder, “remember to watch out for fairies and wraiths.” He grinned at the look on my face. I stumbled for a moment and had to swallow against the lump that had formed in my throat. Danny laughed and shook his head at me before turning away and hurrying down the hill. I had no idea if he was serious or not.

Let’s Make Some Magic

Harry Potter. The Lord of the Rings. The Belgariad. The Wheel of Time. The Hollows. All of these influential series have something major in common: they take place outside the realm of “normal” human life.

Magic. They’ve got it.

For all of us over here at Spellbound Scribes, magic is an integral part of writing fiction, whether it’s in small doses or large. Here’s how I go about making mine.

Chinese floating lotus lanterns on a pond. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Make Some Rules

Magic could just run around willy-nilly, but it’s kind of hard to write a story when literally ANYTHING could happen with no rhyme or reason to it. What are the basics that form your magical system? Is it earth based? Spirit based? Blood based? How do the practitioners access it? Is it inborn or can it be taught? Does it necessitate ritual or does it come from within a person?

Once you have your groundwork laid, stick with it. Make sure that if your character has to perform a ritual to do something, you don’t just have them poof it into existence later without the chanty-chanty abracadabras.

Another thing to look at here are taboos. Do most practitioners use earth based magic but abhor blood magic? Or the other way around? Taboos and forbidden corners of magic are fun to play with, especially if you can force your protagonist into using something she doesn’t want to touch. A perfect example of this is Rachel Morgan in the Hollows series by Kim Harrison. She starts out a die hard earth witch, but after a couple books, she dabbles in ley lines and then into what is essentially blood magic. Her transition causes her character to seriously question her morality. This sort of thing can be a phenomenal character developer.

Fire Dancing Treasure Island (Photo credit: davidyuweb)

Set Some Limits — Then Push Them

Everything has limits. Your bank account. Your patience. Your ability to tolerate Jersey Shore. Your magical system should have them too.

In David Eddings‘ Belgariad, death is one of those boundaries. The sorcerers in the books can do pretty much anything with the Will and the Word, but they have some limits that draw back on that seemingly endless possibility. One of those is bringing someone back from the dead.

One point they make with that is that if someone’s dead, they’re probably dead for good reason. Like…a sword in their heart sort of reason. Bringing them back won’t heal the wound, and they’ll just die again anyway. What does Eddings do? He pushes Garion to fight this barrier to save the life of a newborn colt.

Eddings is a great example of magical limits, because not only is death a hard limit, but in this world, doing things with sorcery is almost as physically exhausting as doing them the normal way. Find limits for your magical system, then use them to create obstacles for your characters. Magic’s great and all, but it can’t be a cure-all.

As the time goes and our watches sway, the great magic of the urban beauty and nature stays, it observes people and brings magic into our minds! Enjoy!:) (Photo credit: || UggBoy♥UggGirl || PHOTO || WORLD || TRAVEL ||)

Mix Together that Black and White

The most fun thing about getting to write magic is that it opens up a whole other level of allegorical possibility and chances for your characters to explore their morality. Sure, maybe they can get their annoying sister to stop talking just by waving a hand, but should they? Magic is something that can be clearly abused, but sometimes it’s at its most powerful when your character has to abuse it herself — and justify it.

While I’m not a huge fan of the “magic is addictive” trope (and I think fellow Scribe Kristin will agree with me), there are plenty of gray areas to explore with your characters in the magical world you’ve created for them. The best part is that you’re God of your own world, and you get to control what happens.

Kind of like a magical power, isn’t it?

What do you think about when you’re creating your magical systems? What limits do you like to set?

Related articles

• Magic Systems (chrismcmahons.wordpress.com)
• Spiritual Magic and the Second Chakra! (empoweringlightworkers.wordpress.com)

Of Monsters and Cultural Appropriation

For my latest work, Oasis, I drew heavily on Japanese mythology. My main character, a shape-shifter (female) warrior named Kiana, shifts into a fox, and by moonlight can take a hybrid fox/human form.

I don’t call her a kitsune, but that’s what she is.

A kitsune is a Japanese fox spirit, a trickster or a seductress often, as well as a great protector and a source of wisdom and power. They’re marvelous creatures, and I created a race of them in my fictional world.

A nine-tailed kitsune. Kiana only has one tail, but how many does a girl really need?

I peopled my world with other creatures from Japanese mythology, from eagle-human hybrids called karura to creepy disembodied heads called nekekubi. But I altered these creatures subtly, to make them creepier or more magical, or to endow them with powers that mythology may not have given them. I also changed their names, because I did not intend to lift Japanese mythological culture out of its historical context and paint it directly onto my new novel—plus, the spelling would’ve done me in.

But I felt kinda skeevy doing it.

We’re so used to a fairly small subset of mythological creatures that we don’t really think too much about where they came from. Vampires exist in many (if not most cultures) but there’s a fairly strong Western tradition of vampire mythology. Likewise, werewolves are generally thought to be a European invention. Every culture has its small folk or fairies, and even demons exist across a variety of lands with their respective hells. Most of our supernatural creatures are public domain, part of a worldwide cultural fear of and fascination with beings more powerful than we can comprehend.

So why did I feel skeevy about stealing from the Japanese?

The answer is pretty complicated.

One, I don’t know much about Japanese cultures, and I felt disrespectful, taking their stories and twisting them for my own ends. And two, the U.S. and the global “West” have a long history of stealing things from the East and passing them off as novelties.

And third, I’m just a glutton for punishment.

At any rate, I did my research and learned about the creatures I transplanted into my world, and I tried to give them at least a little bit of authentic flavor. The fact remains, though, that I took my inspiration from a mythos I have no legitimate claim to. I found a tradition I liked, and I corrupted it and had my way with it.

That’s not so simple, either, though. Loads of fantasy novels take on other existing cultures: Guy Gavriel Kay does it beautifully, and Ilona Andrews works creatures from many nations’ fairytales into her works. No one owns the stories of myth and magic passed down for generations.

In the end, what I created is something new entirely. It’s inspired by Japanese mythology, but it makes no claim to be authentic. The Japanese stories and creatures run like a golden thread through a tapestry that I wove: they’re a beautifying part of it, but they’re not the only feature.

And if we’re respectful, does it matter if we’re using magic that’s foreign to us?

I’m not sure.

I don’t actually have a good answer to this one, readers. What do you think of folklore in fantasy? Is it public domain? Have I joined a tradition of cultural abuse and callous repurposing? What works do you know that successfully blend cultures?