They didn't burn witches. They burned women.

Sep 10, 2024

"Sit and listen to death and to what she whispers to you."

- Risa Dickens, Missing Witches

Happy Halloween and Samhain, camerados!

I never completely know what I'm going to write when I sit down to send all of you a missive. I knew I wanted to do a tarot spread for you in honor of spooky season. That was it. But with the election coming up and spending some time the past few days considering how I want to spend Halloween (Samhain, for those who follow the old ways of their ancestry, as I do), I found myself stumbling upon this bit of gorgeous reflection in my beloved rare print copy of Judith Berger's Herbal Rituals, which never fails to deeply connect me to my divine feminine lineage, to the triple goddess of maiden, mother, and crone, and to each of you who believe, as I do, in the complex and beautiful medicine of the seasons:

The twenty-four hours of October 31, and midnight especially, hang between the old and the new year, noosed by a slender tether to calendars calculated by those of rational mind. The day and eve of Old Year's night belong neither to the land of the living nor to the land of the dead, both to the time of endings and the time of beginnings, suspended outside of human-made concepts and laws.

Intentions, declarations, wishes, and desires spoken at this time carry great power, for both the secular anchors which fix our sense of time and the elemental laws by which we are bound and relaxed. On this night, what we ask, invoke and name reverberates throughout all time and all worlds, initiating vast changes in our lives...

In the ancient Celtic lunar calendar, the three days of All Hallow's Eve, All Soul's Day, and the Day of the Dead were a three-day month - the 13th month - that sat on its own, offering a special triad of days meant for reflection, devotion, connection to the luminous, and openness to messages from our ancestors. Today, Halloween, was actually the New Year's Eve of the Celtic calendar, also known as Old-Year's Night. Many of you have probably heard that this night is considered to be the one in which the veil between this world and the next, between the living and the dead, is thinnest. It is a time of passing strange.

How might you use tonight and those that follow this weekend to honor your dead, to listen to their whispers, and to declare what your heart most intends and longs for?

How might you make a little magic?

As a witch of Celtic and Slavic heritage, I have always connected with my ancestors of old, whether they greeted the sun and moon amidst stone circles in the Highlands of Scotland, the heather fields of Ireland, or the moors of England and wilds of Wales...or kept an eye out for Baba Yaga on long, snowy walks, their bellies warm with wine from the Slovak vineyards they tended.

And, yes, I use the word witch, reclaiming it and reimagining it as so many women today are doing. One of my best friends is a midwife (witch!), another - like myself - an energy healer through reiki (witch!), and still another has the best cackle on either side of the Mississippi (witch!). The women on my mother's side of the family - Irish, Slovak - have a knack for falling into thin places: they see ghosts, know things they shouldn't know. At least one's beloved husband regularly visited her long after he died.

And so I honor the old ways as immigrants do, tying together the scraps of deep knowing lodged in my bones from the old countries, listening hard to voices that have long passed through this plane, trusting my intuition, cupping the hand of my heart over the small, vulnerable flame of women's wisdom.

Berger says:

As the old women of the villages once did, on All Hallow's Eve we may wrap ourselves in the long cloak of the night, huddle around a warm fire, and keen and moan to out ancestors for all we have lost...Releasing our grief, we make room for joy to abound in the new year...passing the threshold from the season of activity to the season of contemplation.

Soviet postage stamps featuring Baba Yaga. (Public Domain)

I am in deep grief right now. Are you?

I grieve for my country.

I grieve that a woman like me would have been burned in this very country not so long ago for this whole newsletter and my books - for so many words I have written.

I grieve that, for all our so-called progress, women are still second-class citizens who are losing their rights to their own bodies, lack equal pay and stature, and are on the precipice of having a second-in-command of their country who believes they should stay at home and rear children instead of pursuing careers. I was once told that I had to submit to my husband and that it was my fault if I caused my brothers-in-Christ to lust. I thought that was a thing of the past, those rules, that kind of claustrophobic, slow death by a thousand cuts. And then I heard J.D. Vance talk about women and watched the men who stood behind him, clapping.

So I started out writing this newsletter with two decks of tarot cards beside me thinking I'd have some cutesy spooky season fun and instead I keep thinking of my new favorite shirt, which I immediately bought because I had never heard our history articulated this way: "They didn't burn witches, they burned women."

WOMEN.

They literally burned their bodies. People smelled their flesh, breathed in their ashes, laughed and jeered as they burned.

I have a pretty good imagination. So do you. We're writers. But can you imagine a world where they burned the women you knew? Your sister or mother or neighbor or best friend? You?

Writers, I'm scared. I'm really genuinely scared that those of us who claim womanhood and witchhood are facing those stakes again, with books of matches in the pockets of politicians and men and even other women who would like nothing better than to see us burn.

And yet, we know this: "Words," as Dumbledore said, "are, in my not-so-humble opinion, our most inexhaustible source of magic. Capable of both inflicting injury, and remedying it."

We must keep being courageous with our words, we must keep practicing our very practical and necessary magic.

I don't have a tarot spread for you today because I need to go celebrate Samhain, talk to my dead grandpa, burn some sage, listen to spooky podcasts, and love on my cats while pulling tarot cards with my husband. I know you understand. I will have an autumn spread for us, hopefully this weekend.

In the meantime, I want you to know that if you are scared I see you. I will stand by your stake with a bucket of water.

I won't let them burn you.

And if I can't do that, then I will burn with you.

A few ways I am nourishing my connection to my witch heritage and nature - I hope they bring you good comfort as we enter this season of uncertainty, and of turning inwards.

Sliding Scale. Learn more here.

I just bought this yesterday - see her Instagram. Feels like what the doctor would order if the doctor was a witch.

You are powerful. You are worthy. You are magical.

With love, no tricks, and many wishes for treats for you, your words, and all the women in your life -

The Lotus and Pen

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