Practical Magic: Glamoury and Tealight Hearths
Charms, Hexes, Weeknight Dinner Recipes, Glamoury and Unsolicited Opinions on Morals and Magic
Is Your Witchcraft Subversive?
Jow: What will you ask for?
Me: To live deliciously, I guess?
Jow: What if you are given a dress, butter and travel?
Me: I fail to see the problem here.
Jow: . . .
Me: Look, if I'm going to my goddesses and spirits who have been established as bigger and more powerful than me, I'ma have to do them the solid of trusting that they aren't going to Amelia Bedelia out on my ass.
Let's get started with today's lesson.
Life in America Hasn't Changed Much
When I read books about Puritan America when I was much younger, everyone wanted to give you the impression of how different Puritan life was from modern American life, even when glossing over the whole Witchcraft Crisis where everyone lost their damn minds for a hot minute in American history. Puritans never drank! They never had fun! They wore severe clothing! They always were good at all times! And . . .not so much. There were tons of bars, they played games once their work was done, the Boston Puritan women wore scarlet petticoats and the Puritans often fell asleep during sermon along with getting into long lawsuits with each other and had frequent pre-martial sex.
Of course, when I started my life as a witch in ye olde 1990s, everyone was super excited about the Burning Times. Who doesn't love a good persecution story? On its highly sensationalized surface, it was a Wiccan Feminist Lifetime Movie that was hard to look away from. Women being killed for presumed witchcraft! Innocent victims! No one is acting in a sisterly manner to each other! Men were being super mean! Witchcraft was super misunderstood! And while it was highly unlikely the women who were murdered were murdered for actual witchcraft, they were often widows or landowners and sometimes had difficult personal histories such as homelessness and children out of wedlock. During that time, children out of wedlock happened far more likely than you would think and was either received semi-neutrally if you were super sorry about it and people liked you or as an excuse to seize all your goods because you were a ho and people didn't like you for whatever reason.
While obviously it's horrific that all these innocent women (and men!) were slaughtered and we can't (and shouldn't) overlook that aspect, what I am personally becoming fascinated with is how the Crisis was a time for women to seize power. Teenaged girls (literally) roared like lions for months in their houses and their parents had no escape from it during the winter. Wives suddenly became too afflicted to do house work and took afternoon naps instead. Women of color and servant girls figured out how to run this show, even when they had to do prison bids here and there. It was a really exciting free for all for a hot minute while women were power grabbing and settling scores, both things that had been previously denied to them. In the beginning of all this, there wasn't even much of a consequence to being accused, people were just getting locked up for a little bit here or there making it a really powerful time for oppresssed parties until it got (dead) serious.
What Does Living Deliciously Even Mean?
Work Your Way Out
Think about the roles in your life. As a worker bee, as a partner, as a family member, as a neighbor, as a friend, as a coven mate as whatever you are. Chances are, since you don't have Angry Puritan God yelling at you if you are even thinking about dessert and survival is often more of a financial issue rather than an agricultural/environmental issue at present, you are probably auto piloting on some if not all of those roles. Consider spending some time fully present in these rolls, even when it's annoying/tedious/aggravating. What's expected of you? Consider fulfilling a few temporary expectations that you usually dodge. How does it feel to do them? After spending some time fully present with these roles and the expectations of the roles, how can you make those roles subversive in order to regain your power? How can you use that subversion to agitate for your world to change in the ways you would like to see it change?
The Experiment
So, the magic part. Wouldn't it be fantastic if you just had to go down to the crossroads and make (1) pact with the right spirit and then buy the clothes to get the life you want to have? How tidy! How low effort! All you would have to do is do magic once and then spend some money and taaaaaaaaaaaaaa-daaaaaaaaaaaaa!!!!
No.
Even if you are as new as a shiny new penny to magic, you are not new to life. Have you ever seen life work that way before? Not the way you want it to work, the way it actually works. No, friend. It does not. So let's work with the actual paradigm that is in front of us. Real change comes from lots of work that may or may not pay off in the ways you want it to, lots of magic that may or may not work in the ways you want it to and a little bit of glamour to set you apart. It is slow. It is long. It is tedious. It is cumbersome.
If you are new to me, you are seeing the results. You're not seeing the last ten years it's taken me to get here. Here's a hint: Before the book, there was a steady diet of despair, crying, rejection and existential crisis. This has not all magically all gone away. Nothing makes anything all better. Not for me, not for you, not for anyone. But the board is always changing, do you want to be batted around it all helpless and hopeless or do you want to move the pieces?
If you want to start moving the pieces, I highly recommend doing the entire New Year, New You: An Experiment in Radical, Magical Transformation and start now before you get wrapped up in everyone else's half assed New Year's resolutions. It's self guided and it is as always, my gift to you. If you've done it before (or started it before), you can always do it again and see how you've grown and changed and evolved since the last time you've done it and make some moves on the board.
Get that dress, Charmer. Get that dress.
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