Friday I'm in love... with critical theory!
Campus lyfe and political strife!
Inside: An update on my first day of school, a discussion of ways that witchcraft can be a force for good in your life and in the world, and … kittens! (Side note: sorry about all the yawning in the voice over! I wrote this on a mid-day break but I didn’t get home to record until late. So, another bloopers reel, lol, sigh).
#CollegeLyfe #GoBruins
First day back at school! Such a strange feeling. I’ve been lost on campus about a dozen times now, and I feel so strangely conspicuous. Absolutely NO ONE is paying attention to me but it’s all so unfamiliar and I’m decades older than everyone (except the professors, lol) that I keep feeling like someone is going to stop me and say, “What are you doing here??” But it feels good to be around all the young people. Their aliveness and enthusiasm. I keep hearing conversations of the undergrads talking about ecology and decoloniality - it’s inspiring, giving me hope for the future!
My first class - Culture, Power, and Social Change - seems to have been cancelled today (which I guess is normal the first week?), so I wandered around trying to get to know the campus and remembered how when I finished my MFA program (in 2006) I swore to myself I’d never carry a backpack again. They’re so heavy! It seems that I’ve broken my MFA oath — but I did get a cute one on Etsy.
Now I’m sitting on the grass writing to y’all before I head to my next class, Research Methodologies. I’m itching to go deep into some of the research topics I came here to study, like ancestral folk and land-based magic of 16th century Scottish witches!
It will be a while yet before I get to that, but I will keep you posted on how it goes.
Can Witchcraft Combat Capitalism?
For my Theories of Culture class beginning next week, the first essay we had to read is called “Culture is Ordinary” by Raymond Williams.
In the essay, Williams argues that there are two forms of culture, 1) the kind everyone has access to, like cuisine, speaking your specific language, celebration of holidays, understandings of gender, etc. and 2) what we often refer to as High Culture, literature, cinema, law, governance, and so on.
The first are practiced by everyone, but the creation of the second is largely limited to people in the upper classes (I’m wayyyyy over-simplifying this argument here, of course people in “lower classes” produce music and literature, but just bear with me for a moment).
What’s particularly interesting for us witches is…
…how Williams argues that in order to change the means of production — the oil wells, the factories, the legal system, the educational system – the culture in which they exist needs to change FIRST. Otherwise the means of production will not change, because the will to do it won’t be there.
For example, in order to ban guns you have to first become a culture that does not celebrate guns. Films like Rambo influence people’s desire to see themselves as macho good guys with guns, which influences the rhetoric in politics, which influences the laws, which influences the culture in a kind of feedback loop.
Where I see this relating to witchcraft is that by practicing our craft we ARE changing the culture.
By attuning to the rhythms of the moon, we are resisting a culture that forces people to neglect the rhythms of their body and the organic world
By celebrating the gods of our ancestors, we are making connections with a pre-colonial history that the dominant culture would have us forget
By entering trance states, we are opening ourselves to different ways of thinking than the Western world view the “rationality” is best (how destroying the ecology of the planet is “in our rational self interest” still remains a mystery to me)
By listening to our intuition, we are living into the felt sense of our bodies which leads us towards prioritizing our health and wellbeing over producing capital for our overlords
I love knowing that here at Mystery Cult, are we creating a culture of care, alliance with the more than human world, and celebrating beauty and the imagination.
Every time we practice magic, we take another step on the road out of the walled city of capitalist patriarchy towards the forest of pleasure and enchantment. The deeper we get into that forest, the more beautiful our life becomes. Huzzah in all directions!
Happy Ads*
Admit that you need these cats.
Our own dear Jessica, initiate of Mystery Cult, found these two kittens living under her garden shed and they need a home! If you live in Los Angeles and need a cat, reach out to @JessicaSews on Instagram. And be sure and send us a picture once you picked them up!