season 1, episode 2 - shamanism with ana campos
our guest for episode 2 is ana campos! ana is a brazilian shamanic witch, tarot teacher and reader, and fiber witch. she owns circle of stitches in salem, massachusetts where she explores the intersection between witchcraft and the fiber arts. you can find her online at circleofstitches.com and on instagram @circlestitches.
each season we read a new book about witchcraft practices around the world with the #snortandcacklebookclub, with a book review by ash and the occasional guest helping us close out the season. this season's #snortandcacklebookclub read is "witchcraft in early modern poland 1500-1800" by wanda wyporska.
take the fibre witch quiz at ashalberg.com/quiz. follow us on instagram @snortandcackle and be sure to subscribe via your favourite podcasting app so you don't miss an episode!
seasons 1-3 of snort & cackle are generously supported by the manitoba arts council.
transcript
snort & cackle - season 1, episode 2
ash alberg: [00:00:00] [Upbeat music plays in the background.] Hello, and welcome to the Snort and Cackle podcast. I'm your host Ash Alberg. I'm a queer fibre witch and hedge witch, and each week I interview a fellow boss witch to discuss how everyday magic helps them make their life and the wider world a better place.
Expect serious discussions about intersections of privilege and oppression, big C versus small C capitalism, rituals, sustainability, astrology, ancestral work, and a whole lot of snorts and cackles. Each season, we read a new book about witchcraft practices around the world with the #SnortAndCackleBookClub with a book review by me and the occasional guest helping us close out the season. Our book this season is Witchcraft in Early Modern Poland, 1500-1800 by Wanda Wyporska.
I am here today with Ana Campos, who is a Brazilian shamanic witch, tarot teacher and reader and fibre witch. She owns Circle of Stitches in Salem, Massachusetts, where she explores the intersection between witchcraft and the fiber arts. And Ana basically runs my dream witch store.
Welcome. Hi, my love.
ana campos: [00:01:20] Thank you for having me.
ash alberg: [00:01:22] Thanks for joining me.
This is going to be fun. So, tell us a bit about you and what you do.
ana campos: [00:01:26] So I am Brazilian, as you mentioned, I was born in Brazil and I've lived a weird life, I guess. I've traveled a lot and moved around a lot, and ultimately I have settled into Witch City, Salem, Massachusetts, which was where I decided to be when I was 14 years old. I was like, one day I'm going to live in Salem.
And so I'm here, like living my best witch life. So I opened my shop Circle of Stitches in 2015 and surprisingly not a lot of people get the pun, it's a play off of circle of witches, but with stitches. And that's my full-time thing.
So I run my shop. I teach knitting and tarot and witchcraft and write knitting patterns and dye yarn and fiber witchery is pretty much like a hundred percent of my life.
ash alberg: [00:02:13] Love it. That is awesome. And you, okay, you have a fairly specific witchcraft practice and actually follow a tradition. You've got covens, priestesses, the whole shitamaroo, as I refer to it, which I do not have. And I would love to hear a little bit more about that because I admire it and I also am fascinated by it and have no desire to do that ... that much focus my own.
ana campos: [00:02:41] Yeah so I... I came into witchcraft in my, like, mid-teens, I think a lot of us do. And I was still living in Brazil at the time. Actually, no, that's not true. I was living in Uruguay when I discovered witchcraft in the early days of the internet and witchcraft blogs.
And then I moved back to Brazil when I turned 15 and, that's when you start getting old enough to be able to go places without your parents finding out, soooo ... [Both laugh.]
I, back at that time, there was an organization in Brazil called Abnawicca which is the Brazilian association of Wicca and there's a whole conversation, side conversation, about witchcraft versus Wicca but in Brazil, the, I feel like the terminology is a little less loaded than in the Northern American continent. Witchcraft just got lumped under that umbrella.
But the founders of the organization actually lived in the same city that I lived in, Brasilia, and they had rituals at the city park, which would basically be the equivalent of New York's Central Park in Brasilia a city park there. And they had rituals in... for the full moons and sabbaths and I, as a 17 year old girl, decided that it was totally reasonable to sneak out of the house and go to rituals in the middle of the city park with strangers because teenagers have no sense of danger. [Ash laughs.] And I was lucky that it was very nice, safe people. [Ash chuckles.]
And one of the organizers then, who publicly goes by Gwyndha, she is still my high priestess to this day. So we've been working together for over 18 years at this point. It was actually funny because it was like public ritual setting, but you get to know the people that are going and I was offered apprenticeship with them, which was great. And I got lucky because then they started asking for, "Oh yeah, we need an ID to make sure that you're 18 and whatnot," and I had just turned 18 like the month prior. And I was like good thing you didn't ask me like six months ago cause I was totally a minor, but it didn't even cross my mind at the time.
And so at the time they were still part of the old Dianic tradition. There is a very famous Brazilian witch called Claudiney Prieto and today I don't know what tradition he goes... he's under today because he's founded a couple of traditions. He also became Gardnerian at some point. But at that time, he was bringing old Dianic to Brazil and that main public work was under the McFarland old Dianic, and so I was actually there at the founding meeting of the Brazilian Dianic tradition, which since has splintered and done all sorts of things, but that was in the early 2000s, probably right around '99, 2000.
So I was part of that. There's actually my signature in the founding book, which is funny. And then, because personal disagreements happen everywhere, even in spiritual groups, the tradition fractured. And you know, I kept working with my high priestess.
She went off to create her own tradition called the Triskelion tradition, but it's all descended from old McFarland Dianic, with an emphasis on the feminine divine and the masculine divine is more a concert role and even though it started as an old Dianic offshoot, there were a lot of different practices that became part of what we were doing because you learn from different folks, and so there was a lot of harmonic influences in the work as well. So I consider myself a shamanic witch because my practice does center a lot around working with spirit guides and non-ordinary reality and yeah, I forgot where I was going. [Laughs.]
ash alberg: [00:06:16] That’s great.
ana campos: [00:06:16] But yeah, so I am initiated in the Dianic tradition, had some students of my own, I've had covens. Right now I actually, I am mostly working solo and with my high priestess, like through my, like steady, ongoing, like witchcraft practice person. [Chuckles.]
ash alberg: [00:06:34] Cool. So can you give us a bit of the way that you... not identify, but the way that you, oh, what's the word I'm looking for? Definition. There we go. So can you tell us a bit about how you define shaman? Because I think especially like for me as a white person who doesn't follow like specific practices, like I know that shaman and shaman-esque practices are rooted in a lot of different cultural witchcraft traditions around the world but I think, especially for me as a white person, when I hear shaman lately, specifically in Canada and the States, that I'm immediately... are we using this word in a way that is appropriate?
Which obviously for you, it is. So for you, how do you define the word shaman and does it feel like a word that you don't, you're fine with people using regardless of their background or is it attached to a specific practice or type of practice that somebody is involved in that may or may not have ancestral ties? Like...
ana campos: [00:07:40] Yeah, so I'm very careful about not calling myself a shaman, I call myself a shamanic witch. And so there's yeah, there's a whole... get ready, there's a whole like, rant about this. The word shaman as it's used today in Western like anthropology and culture, it comes from the work of the late Michael Harner. He passed away a couple of years ago, but he was an anthropologist who set out to study tribal practices, like religious practices specifically, and he noticed that there were commonalities as far as how these practices were done even though these were cultures that were completely isolated from each other.
And he came up with the term shamanism and shaman, that actually comes from a Siberian tribe, so if you're being very technically accurate, like there are no north American shamans, right? Like the original shamans are like the Siberian tribe, but it became a term that got used in anthropology to lump these practices together.
And so when I talk about shamanic witch, I talk about... it's basically the modality of my practice. And to me, the core of shamanic practice is, is working with spirit guides in non-ordinary reality specifically. So whether you're traveling the upper world only, or lower world only there's... to me, it's this component of entering an altered state and working in non-ordinary reality with spirit guides.
Like that, to me, the synthesis and that's the common element that Michael Harner was finding when he was doing this research, that people were using techniques for entering altered states of mind. Usually it was based around sonic driving. But, so, people were using rattles, drums, and rhythmic beads to alter your brainwaves so you can be in an altered state of mind and so you can travel into non-ordinary reality to do your ritual work. So that's what that means to me. I definitely think that there's a lot of inappropriate use of the word.
I would never call myself a shaman and I would say that ... this is kind of a bold thing, but most people that are calling themselves shamans probably don't really realize where that word comes from and what it really means. And I think that's really tough.
I actually, I forget that I did this a couple of years ago, I published a book through Sterling publishing called A Little Bit of Shamanism. It's part of a, a series on occult things, and they reached out to me. And I had people who were very upset with me because I only accepted the deal under the agreement that they would let me write about like lineage and cultural appropriation and proper respect.
And so of course, if you go on like Amazon or whatever, there's people complaining about how "Oh, do we really need to be talking about this? It's everywhere." And I think that like we do, we absolutely do. And so I would never go as far as to call myself a shaman. That's why I call myself as shamanic witch. Witchcraft is my religious practice, but shamanism is one of my main modalities. So that's where that definition comes in.
ash alberg: [00:10:33] Cool. Thank you for that. I feel like that helps. And this is actually, I'm planning on this being one of our first episodes that comes out for the podcast. So hopefully then it gives also folks a little bit of like a baseline of knowledge that they can then be working through as we then continue with these conversations.
And then also I feel like for a lot of witches, then the idea of like upper world, middle world, underworld is like a fairly common thread, but is there anything specific for you that when you are journeying between like... middle world is where we are physically in this realm, but is there a way that for you, either your own practice or your own experiences, or just generally the way that you identify the difference between upper world and underworld journeying?
ana campos: [00:11:20] Yeah, so the way that I use it in my own practice and the way that I teach it when I'm running workshops as well, is the idea of the three worlds model, right? So upper, lower, middle being where we are now, right? The physical world. The world is the only one that has a physical dimension that we can sense with physical touch.
And it also has a spiritual dimension, everything has a non-ordinary reality side to it. And I just want to start off by saying lower world is not Christian hell, those are not the same thing. They are not equivalent. And so I think it's really important when we start talking about these concepts to try and break away from sort of Judeo-Christian assumptions and how we think about them. So upper world is not heaven, lower world is not hell. [Chuckles.]
ash alberg: [00:11:59] Yeah, totally.
ana campos: [00:12:01] Within a shamanic framework, lower world tends to be where we find animal guides and plant spirits. It tends to be very earthy. And that's a place that you get to journeying literally through a passage in the earth. And so that's where you tend to go for that kind of knowledge.
Upper world tends to be where we find humanoid guides, ancestors. It definitely has that sort of lighter, airier feel. And so I tend to work more with lower worlds than upper world, but that's just, personal preference. It's not necessarily like a, spiritual, religious doctrine type thing.
ash alberg: [00:12:36] Cool. Yeah. It's so funny because I find that I'm much more comfortable with my underworld guides. Like when they pop up, I'm like, cool, like I, welcome, thank you. And I feel also like the way that they communicate with me is something that is a little easier for me to tune my body into, whereas my upper world guides like... It was around Samhain last year, actually on Samhain last year, that I finally connected with one in particular who has just been like with me for years, over a decade, and has scared the shit out of me for most of that time.
And it had gone away for a little while and then came back in a really big way. And I was like, oh shit. And I talked to some of my friends and they were like, like if, I don't know, like why don't you try A. Setting some boundaries around it, but also tarot is a way that I regularly am engaging with my guides and talking with them, and it's a way where it... the conversation via the cards is a little bit easier for me to understand what's going on. And so they were like, why don't you see if one of your lower world guides can help you communicate with this other guide via the cards.
And we did that and it was like, oh, you're actually like you're here to help me, and you're just trying to give me this like wisdom in a way that is scaring the shit out of me because you're this like very old, very wise power that doesn't know how to do ... say things subtly. So I was like, oh shit. Okay, cool.
So we have a much better relationship now, but yeah, it's funny because I definitely find that like the lower world stuff feels like it comes a little bit more intuitively and the upper world stuff, I like really need to be tuned into their frequency, pretty specifically to know what's going on. And otherwise they just scare me.
ana campos: [00:14:22] Honestly, in my experience, as far as my own practice and teaching other folks and leading journeys I would say that 90% of people find it easier to access lower world than upper world. Which I think is really interesting. I don't have any firm theories as to why.
ash alberg: [00:14:39] And it is so interesting though, 'cause it's also like it's, I feel like it's almost like the antithesis of the way that humans are trained in modern society to really like, feel very cut off from nature and very much not attuned to, in particular, like our plant friends and allies, like we're not taught to communicate with them and with animals.
And it's very much this like master pet like place or dynamic that also does not always feel particularly good and does not recognize the wisdom that are... these other creatures have that we don't have access to and that we could be benefiting from if we were to like, learn how to communicate in a healthier way.
But it's funny that at our most base self, when we literally just get out of our own way, that then those are the things that are easier to tune into because it is innately there. And that ability is innately in probably all... I think all of us have the capacity. It's just a question of do we hone those skills and how cut off are we to begin with that we then need to be like reconnecting those things to understand those messages when they do pop up for us?
ana campos: [00:15:59] Yeah, it's definitely something that requires practice. Like your brain gets used to working in certain ways and doing certain things and journeying definitely takes practice. A lot of people can't get there the first time, and then they, if you keep working on it, you go back and you have amazing experiences.
I think that the hardest part is that people get caught up on, "is it real?" And if... or not, and what does that mean? And there's a whole side conversation that we could have for many hours on it, like the nature of reality and truth, but I think that the thing that people really need to keep in mind with things like that is that if you're experiencing it, it's real. Because the important thing, is it challenging you, is it helping you look at things in a different way? Are you experiencing what you're experiencing? And if you are then it's real.
We have this idea that things aren't real unless they're like tangible to physical touch and that's just... right, that's not true because we're having a conversation right now. It's our voices. And so it, technically, there's not like a tangible, physical thing that we can touch. But it's still an experience that we're sharing.
And so I think that what's really important is for people to step outside of westernized perspectives of what reality isn't. I think the hardest thing is that people go into these things with a framework that looks at the world such as, " Western science is right" is the default and everything else is wrong, or... or fabricated or not real. And Michael Harner, in a way, was considered a failure as an anthropologist, right? Cause he went to study these cultures and then he ended up actually becoming initiated in several of them and realizing that there was a different way of life there.
But from an academic perspective, he's considered a failure because, he got, he... he got sucked into the cultures that he was studying. So there's this like superiority complex, "Western culture has it all figured out, we know the truth and we're just observing like these you know, other idiots."
ash alberg: [00:17:43] Yes. Oh my gosh.
ana campos: [00:17:44] And that's a really difficult thing.
ash alberg: [00:17:46] Yeah, it's very paternalistic. That's such a good point where it's... it's very, it's... it is just the colonialist, like, baseline, of going into other spaces and assuming that the thing that you know is the right thing and that anything that challenges... if people don't agree with the thing that you are saying, then they are wrong and you need to show them the right way to do a thing and they need to abandon it.
It's just, it's so fucking pervasive. Instead of coming into a space, recognizing that you are a visitor in this space and that if you've been invited and you're still a visitor, if you forced your way in, well then get the fuck out. But to then... if you're invited in, then observe and be grateful for being invited into seeing these other experiences.
And if you're invited in further to practice those experiences, then value them for what they are. And if they really don't mesh for you, that's fine. But that doesn't mean that they're
wrong. Unless they're actively harming you, then that... and and/or harming others, then like it's not wrong, it's just different.
ana campos: [00:18:55] And, so I also have a background in psychology. You know, when I went to college, I actually got two degrees and one was in psych and one of the things that I thought was very interesting is the approach to abnormal psychology and how that... how Western culture really demands a separation between spirituality and science and other cultures really understand that we're all just trying to learn more about the world and that these things aren't at odds. Right, science and religion weren't always at odds. And in the study of schizophrenia specifically, right, in Western medicine, if you're diagnosed as a schizophrenic you have that diagnosis for life, right? You're considered to either be an active schizophrenic or you're in remission.
But in India, where there is more acceptance of the idea of, you know, embodying deities, a bigger connection to the spiritual world, schizophrenia is not seen through the same lens. It's often seen as someone having communications with spirit world, but also every instance is treated as its own thing. Like you're not considered a schizophrenic for life, right? You don't go into remission. Like you had your episode or whatever, and they've actually found that people have fewer relapses in that culture.
ash alberg: [00:20:06] That's so interesting and also makes sense 'cause I feel like if you're able to recognize those things and stop trying to force a very narrow definition onto it, and also always prescribing that definition as being bad for you, that it then allows you to release a little bit, and in that release create stronger boundaries so that then, in the future, like if this is not helping you, that you're able to be communicating with those spirits in that situation and be like, you know what, like this... I appreciate what you're trying to do for me, or I really don't appreciate you. You're actually like a really shitty spirit and I don't want you around.
And, but instead of just being like, no, this is all in your head, it's all on you, you're wrong and like your core sense of self is wrong. And I think it's so interesting too, where it's for us witches, it's very normal to talk about, " Oh yeah, I saw ghosts or..." and the more people I talk to, it... I am realizing just how many people on an ongoing basis do see ghosts. Ghosts and spirits.
And like, when you talk about it in a way where it's just like very normal, then people just relax and they're like, oh, okay, this is fine. But I think we've made things so clinical. And when you go in for, if you're going for a general therapy intake, then there can be like, I remember in university, like going in for an intake to see, like... get a therapist, 'cause I needed one because university/life, and me being me in knowing things and like living and working in mental health realm prior to going and seeking my own therapist was recognizing like, oh, based on this question that you're asking, I know that is directly leading to this kind of a diagnosis and that is not what I need your help on.
So I'm going to answer the way that I want to answer so that I actually just keep you focused on this thing that I need help with. But it was very clear that there were multiple questions that were very focused on, do you see things, do you hear voices?
And it was very obvious that those, if you were to say yes to those things, that it would be, you'd get the schizophrenic diagnosis or like pre-diagnosis because they can't actually, and now, the definition is changing and depending on who, like what practitioner you're talking to, they're now believing that schizophrenia is like maybe a series of other things.
Even 10 years ago, you couldn't actually be officially diagnosed as having schizophrenia until after you were dead and they did a brain... like a craniotomy which is... okay, so you're now going to put a diagnosis on somebody that is very much specifically related to, are they seeing things and/or hearing things that other people do not see and hear? And then that's all the information that you need to then give them this diagnosis that you then can't even confirm until after they die.
And then in the meantime, like potentially you're missing stuff, right? Like sometimes we see things because sometimes we're seeing ghosts and we're seeing spirit guides. Other times, like, there might actually be something important that's happening medically or physically for that person where if you didn't just pigeon hole this definition as being like this equals this, and you were to look at things in a more holistic way, then you'd realize, oh wait, them seeing this particular kind of thing is actually indicative of a tumor pressing on this particular part of the brain and so maybe we should go in and check that there's no tumor.
Like it's just, it's wild to me how science in the west and medical science in the west has become so very much like two plus two equals four. And we're not even going to look at what other numbers are actually part of the equation and are like sideways, right beside the equation.
ana campos: [00:24:01] There's vectors and stuff that we're not looking at.
ash alberg: [00:24:04] Yes. Yeah.
ana campos: [00:24:06] Yeah. There was a book that I read recently... So one of the folks that I've taken some workshops with, he was part of the Foundation for Shamanic Studies, which, Michael Harner had founded and it still lives on, there's an instructor called Yan Moss, and she wrote a book on weather shamanism. And I, I was reading her book that I haven't read the whole thing, but she talks a lot about that idea that spirituality and science don't have to be at odds, and that we're just looking at the same thing from different angles. And she was talking about weather modification specifically and weather shamanism and weather spirits and she's talking about how the science of weather is real, yes, scientific things are happening, there's air current movements and there's air pressure and things move and things happen.
But that doesn't mean that there isn't a spiritual component in addition to that, that there aren't weather spirits, that there aren't things that we are creating energetically that are impacting climate and ...so it just, it's not useful ultimately, I think, to treat these things like they're completely in isolation, right? That's not to say that there aren't very obvious, scientific reasons for global warming, but also we're not helping by refusing to acknowledge that there's the spiritual forces at work, and the fact that there are these spirits that we
should be trying to cultivate a positive relationship with. So we're aggravating the issues from many different angles.
ash alberg: [00:25:28] Yes. And when you speak to... I feel especially like here, like on Turtle Island, like the Indigenous communities are often much more attuned to those sorts of things and it's... we are angering the waters right now by polluting them! And it's... it's... and it's why you make offerings to the water and that's why you make offerings to the plants, and if you are harvesting, then you don't just take without giving something in return. And you ask for consent from the different things that you are taking from before you take from them. And it's a much more holistic way of being and it's very antithical to... I think that's the word... pretend it is.
ana campos: [00:26:05] Yeah, antithetical's a word.
ash alberg: [00:26:06] What, okay, good. [Laughs.] Sometimes I forget. But it's very much just does not jive with capitalism and the... colonialism and capitalism I feel are just like one in the same realistically.
ana campos: [00:26:19] Absolutely. Yeah.
ash alberg: [00:26:20] But.
ana campos: [00:26:20] Colonialism exists because capitalism, right?
ash alberg: [00:26:23] A hundred percent. Yes exactly. And it's this, and I think that's part of the problem, right, is that if you were to do big C capitalism and colonialism in the way that they are their most malignant form, it is that you take without having any consideration for anything else around you. And that is ultimately like them in their most malignant form. Which is unfortunately the way that a lot of our world is operating these days.
And so it shouldn't be that shocking, like we're dealing with more intense weather patterns. Like it... I joke. I'm like, oh yeah, Mama Nature is pissed at us today and so that's why this weather is shitty, but it is part of it, right? Like we are causing global warming and we have scientific reasons and proofs to show how that global warming and climate change is happening, and also, I like... if I was a weather spirit, I'd be pissed right now. And I would be like, you know what? You're not paying attention. Yeah. Let me get your attention. Let me whip up some extra seas happening right now. So yeah, anyway that was a fun little tangent.
ana campos: [00:27:29] You have frozen.
ash alberg: [00:27:30] Oh, did I? Can you see me? I'm good. ana campos: [00:27:36] Okay, now you're back. Hello!
ash alberg: [00:27:37] All right. Sweet. We're... this one is going to have a little bit more edits in it than the other ones do. Okay. So tell us how you work... oh, my internet connection is unstable... there we go. So tell us how you work your magick practice and witchcraft practice into your biz?
It is... I love it because it's a little bit more obvious where you literally run a witchcraft yarn store, [laughs], but tell us how all of that came to be, why it feels important? It is the perfect fit for Witch City, for sure. But yeah.
Tell us a bit about that. Tell us about Circle of Stitches. If anybody has the opportunity to go, I highly recommend it. Otherwise you can purchase things from Ana online which I also recommend.
ana campos: [00:28:23] So funny enough, even though now it seems very obvious to have a witchy yarn store in Salem, Massachusetts, that's not how it started. And I've been a witch longer than I've been a knitter, but it's actually, in some ways it's hard to be a witch in Salem. Like it's easy because there's a lot of witches, but on the other hand, there's really a divide in the residents here.
There's the people who are like the old townies who have been here before Salem got famous and they hate all the witch stuff. And then there's the people who very much embrace it. And so if you're a person who is trying to function in normal society at the same time, it gets harder to... it gets easy to get lumped into with, "Oh, she's just one of the witches."
Unfortunately, we do have some characters that are openly witches that ... not great ambassadors for sort of the witches, and so you kind of get lumped into that. And so there's people who, you know, who live here, who turn their nose up at that. They're like, oh, I'm sick of like the crystal shops and this and that.
And so it can be hard to openly be a witch in Salem sometimes. So I started just air quotes, like a yarn shop. I always had the name "Circle of Stitches" because I thought that's something that I can get away with even just saying oh, it's Salem, it's cute. And then I realized I didn't quit a corporate job to not do whatever the fuck I want to be doing.
I started just by teaching tarot classes and it grew from there. Honestly, for me the fiber arts are really an excuse to engage in some very sort of primal forms of witchcraft. To me, one of the most important things is sacred circles of women and you know, not male folks, gathering in space and sharing intergenerational knowledge, right?
There's very few things where you have different generations of women and femme folks coming together and just being together. And that's something that was very important in an older culture, having women's spaces. And so I'm like teehee, you think you're all here for knitting ... [Ash cackles.] ... but really what we're doing is building community and spending time together and creating that space.
And so I bring it all together under that idea of like ritual and mindfulness, 'cause knitting is ritual, right? It's repetition. If you want to get really like semantic and scientific about it, like ritual has to do with like repetition and how it affects your brainwaves.
When we're meditating and when we're doing any sort of spiritual work, what we're aiming to do is slow down our brain waves. When we're fully awake and alert, right, brainwaves are in a beta state, right? That's the speed of our brainwaves.
And when you get into a daydream, you're going into what's called an alpha state. Your brainwaves literally slow down. And if you look at ritual practices across the world, there's things that happen sort of across the board like candlelight, flickering lights, dim lights, chanting, dancing, singing, repetitive stuff, it just triggers your brain into doing that. And so it's more repetitive thank you think.
So really I'm, with an excuse, getting to slow down, right, and slow down their brainwaves and engage in that even if they don't realize what they're doing. So that really is very central to me. I've become more open about it over the years and started owning that yes, witchcraft and fiber arts intersect in that mindfulness, in that ability to bring ritual and mindfulness to our lives every day. Witchcraft doesn't just have to be like, cackling in black robes, which I do as well. [Ash laughs.]
That’s very good for the soul, I think. But I'm just trying to show people that it's that sort of mindfulness and connectedness that's really the core of witchcraft to me. And that's what I'm really trying to bring to my business.
ash alberg: [00:31:42] I love that. It's also... it's lovely because for knitters who aren't witches, they can still just as easily walk into your shop, get some really lovely yarn, pick up their needles, pick a pattern and either, pre and post COVID, sit on the couch and knit or, like out they go and they're happy.
For the folks that do want to be able to like, maybe get their first tarot deck or, you have those really lovely little spell patches that are so cute that, just fit so nicely on, on a project bag or, get a really simple spell kit to first... when you're first learning how to be casting your own spells, it can be a lot easier when somebody else has just curated something really nice for you and, they are... you're working with other small businesses supporting other small businesses.
And then yeah, I don't know, it's just... it's ...I love it because it's basically a one-stop shop, like for me, I'm like, I want some yarn and I want some candles for my space that then are like my meditative candles, and I want a pin because I like to collect my enamel pins and I need some stones. So here let's grab some stones.
ana campos: [00:32:49] Honestly it makes me so happy whenever someone places an order and it's yarn and tarot decks all together. And I'm like, ahh, my people. There's people who aren't into that!
I recently heard from one of my employees that she mentioned to like someone at her physical therapist's office that she was working at a yarn shop and that we also had tarot and stuff and this person was like, "Oh, I can't support that." So there... I've had people, when I first started offering tarot workshops, I actually had someone go on our Facebook page and be like, "In the Bible, like it says that this is not okay [Ash gasps] and I can't come to your store." And I was like, I understand your perspective, but I hope you understand that your Christian perspective is not the default, and it's a little terrifying to me that you feel comfortable openly discriminating against someone else's practice because you assume that your perspective is the default.
ash alberg: [00:33:29] Oh my god, yes. Especially as I've... I ...same. Like...witch longer than ... actually, probably same amount of time as far as witchy stuff and knitting stuff like from childhood and then coming in and out of it. And then, but I would say as an adult, I have... I have self-identified as a witch openly for a shorter period of time than I have identified my life as a knitter.
And with my brand, like my brand is very much like, I'm a fibre witch. And I think actually you are the one who like first introduced me to the term fibre witch and I was like, oh, this is it. That's the one. [Both chuckle.]
Yeah, I think so, but it's funny 'cause then I was like talking with a friend of mine who's this beautiful ceramist and she makes... she like goes and she forages her clay, and she forages her... her glazes and like very much just all of that. She's part of my little coven that is scattered around the world. But she refers to herself as a clay witch, and I'm a fiber witch, and it's like what is the material that we are doing most of our spell work and incantations through?
But it's funny because the, like, longer that I have been like very much solidifying that as part of my identity and also as part of my core brand of, "I am here to help other fiber witches to learn and, if you wanna go like full witchy, great. If you only want to do witchy-lite, cool. If you want to do knitwear design and you really don't care about the tarot spreads, that's fine.
The tarot spreads are just there if you want them, they don't, they're not going to make or break your career as a knitwear designer. But yeah, there's been like a slowly increasing number as well of... and it's very infrequent, but I think that's also because the more blatant you are about it and the more open you are about it, then the more people realize, " Oh wait, I'm not going to be able to change this person's mind so I'll just remove myself from the room."
But there's always those people that are like, they need to announce they're unfollowing and ... and I feel like the last election cycle in the States definitely increased that because I had people who had gone through literally like a big part of my brand/sub-brand is the Creative Coven, and it's become something that's much bigger for me, which I love and I'm very happy about, and I'm excited for it to continue to grow as the business grows and continue to be a central core part of the biz, but like the word "coven" is in the languaging.
And I had somebody who had been on a particular email list, had gone through this whole challenge experience of two weeks' worth of emails with, again, the word coven in every single email. And they went through it in the spring and then come the fall, which was coming close to election time for y'all, I then got an email from this person as the emails started coming out again, and all it was, in all caps, "Blood of Jesus" with a bunch of exclamation points. I was like, okay, cool.
We will just remove you. We will block you. This is fine. I don't need to respond to this. This is your own weird type of spell work that you're not going to acknowledge as a spell, but like you like screen-capping Blood of Jesus at me is the Christian version of a spell.
But it was wild to me that I was like, okay, six months ago, literally you went through this, the exact same process, like all of the emails were the exact same. We were just doing the next round of it.
ana campos: [00:36:52] None of that's about you obviously. [Laughs.]
ash alberg: [00:36:53] No, exactly. It's not at all. And I don't feel like it's about me at all, but it is very interesting to me that depending on... like there was very much a correlation, 'cause I remember talking to other witch friends at that time and just the increase of suddenly very vehement and at times slightly scary, depending on the way that it was coming through, of specifically very right-wing Christians attacking any sort of witchcraft branding was like, okay, like you... I'm not coming at you with your shit. Like I might have my opinions about it, but I'm not literally walking into your church or walking into your space or leaving comments on your space saying, "You're wrong," right?
Like I might have, if we're, if we were to engage in a conversation and you were like, this is my beliefs, and I... if those beliefs happen to be actively harming other people's basic human rights, I'm gonna have something to say about that, but the fact that you believe in a monotheistic God, that in and of itself is not my problem. Like I don't, that is not a thing that I am bothered by. I am bothered by you then cherry picking which parts of it you then want to use to shout at other people and that you are so scared. I think that's a big part of it, is that there is a fear attached to things being so different.
And it's, it's so benign. Like my creative coven, like we're not out to make like weird hexing spells at all y'all, but there's... essentially it's like yelling "Blood of Jesus" at somebody is essentially the equivalent of a Christian hex as far as I'm concerned. And it's just, it's very strange, that energy.
ana campos: [00:38:33] I recently renamed, and it's been couple of months now, renamed our Facebook to like Circle of Stitches, Fiber Coven, and I had people leave because they're like, I'm a Christian. I can't be in a coven. But it's, it comes from a place of privilege and in the inability to distinguish belief from fact.
Because, I studied a lot of mythology and then I'll say something like Christian mythology and people are like, "Oh you can't call it mythology." And I was like, why not? Because are you going to tell me that it's facts? Are you seriously telling me that your religious beliefs are fact? Like your worldview, your religious worldview, and your mythology is just as valid as anyone else's.
ash alberg: Exactly!
ana campos: Just because you've managed to turn it into mainstream, doesn't actually turn it into fact. But people come at it from this perspective of, "Oh, Christianity is right and dominant and everyone knows that" and anything else is a challenge to that, which is why someone feels emboldened to go on my Facebook page and say something like "It's not okay that you're doing tarot classes because of the Bible," and I'm like with me, it's not okay that you're doing a ton of other things that are against my beliefs, but I'm not acting like my beliefs are fact and I have the right to tell people about it.
ash alberg: [00:39:39] That's so wild to me. It's ...I'm not shocked by it.
I think also the internet definitely makes things more complicated. Like pre-internet this kind of shit would happen, like you might have somebody picketing at a situation or like trying to arrange a local boycott of a shop like that. That's the physical realm, but like ...
ana campos: [00:40:01] Yeah. I've had people talk about organizing boycotts outside my store for being vocally, politically liberal. [Laughs.]
ash alberg: [00:40:06] Oh my god! This is just... it's so wild to me. And it's, it's not funny, but it's also funny cause it's... it's always like here, this is a thing that challenges me and that isn't actually a threat, but I perceive it as being a threat because it is just going against what I have to say rather than like, when it's, okay, like we're not going to do that. But if you are actively trying to remove somebody's human rights or you're physically threatening them, then like now we're gonna come up and have something to say to you.
And, but like there it's very funny to me. And especially like both of us are very liberal and very left leaning, and ...but I don't think, I have my opinions about like, why would you believe right wing things or conservative thoughts, but in and of themselves, I don't think those are the problems. The problem is that the, when we look at the extremes of either group, then more frequently than not the violence starts at an earlier stage of extremism on the right, in my experience, than ...
On the left, I think we're just not organized enough. Like we're always trying to make everybody feel really good. And by the time that we realized we're like, oh shit, everything's gone terribly. By the time that we get to the point of being violent, the right has been way more organized for a much longer time to get violent at an earlier stage or to come together on one central issue and organize around it at a much earlier stage than the left does.
But that being said, QAnon bullshit, it took both the extreme left and the extreme right through weirdly enough, the same like reasonings and I put reasonings in quotations, but, the reasons that the people were... were finding QAnon conspiracies attractive were for the same reasons, just on one side of the coin or the other, but it was, mistrust of organized government, mistrust of the elite, not being comfortable with the status quo, not trusting the systems that are at play. And that applies on both sides of the political spectrum.
ana campos: [00:42:10] I feel like it's... this was my personal theory, but I feel like it's the way that fear manifests. People have a fear of scarcity. And so I think that when people look at things and they feel afraid and their instinct is to go, “I need to protect me and what's mine,” that's when people swing to the right. They go "Oh, I'm fiscally conservative" and I'm like, no, you're like, that's just a fancy word for "I'm selfish as fuck." Whereas if your fear goes into oh, things are bad. How do I protect the most vulnerable? You end up speaking to the left. But it's the way that your fear manifests.
ash alberg: [00:42:41] Yep. A hundred percent. That's such a good point. And yeah, it is so interesting where it's ...it's are you going to protect the most vulnerable or are you going to protect the group as a whole versus are you going to just protect yourself? And I think I like... scarcity doesn't serve either, either side of those things, right?
If we are looking at every single resource, whether it's money or love or access to, to, different social services, like if we are only looking at these things as being finite resources, then ultimately we are going to fuck ourselves over. Like these things are not... We prescribe a lot of power to them and they do have a lot of power in and of themselves, but they're not finite, like money is a magical thing that most of the time we don't even see physically, right? Like we don't tangibly see the billions and trillions of dollars that are out in the world.
We just are, especially now with so much of this happening via online banking, like there, the money never even physically gets printed. It is just flying through the ether, and we determine okay, this has this much value. This has this much value. But what we could do is be like, oh, we don't have enough for these people based on the value that we've prescribed to this thing that is sitting in the ether. So let's create more of this thing sitting in the ether so that everybody has access to enough to have their baseline needs covered.
That's actually something that we could do without the world going to shit. There are people in the very, very minute top who would have opinions about that because they don't want other people to come close to them. But that is this scarcity tactic at, its best slash worst, right? Like when you have way more than you will ever personally need, and you are not putting it into play in the world around you and reinvesting in your community and in your world.
ana campos: [00:44:38] [Clears throat.] Jeff Bezos. [Grumbles.]
ash alberg: [00:44:39] Yeah, exactly. Literally! We look at like money in and of itself. It... I've been reading... I read We Should All Be Millionaires and it's such a fantastic book, but one of the things that she states where it's... you're working through mindset beliefs is, "You believe... if you believe that money makes somebody a bad person, it doesn't. People are either good or bad, not like across the baseline, but it's not money that makes you more or less of something.
All it does is let you do more or less of what you would do otherwise. So if you are a very compassionate, giving human, you giving, like you receiving more money just means that there will be more money for you to then put out and be able to do more good."
If you are somebody like Jeff Bezos, who likes to sit on his golden throne like a dragon and hoard all of the resources, if that person had no money, they would still hoard the small bits of things that they have around them and operate from that scarcity perspective. And if he has billions of dollars, like Jeff Bezos does, he's still hoarding and sitting on the exact same thing, right? Like it's still that same basic mindset of scarcity versus abundance. And it's... yeah, it's fucking wild.
ana campos: [00:45:54] It’s funny that you mentioned the dragon because I recently read a statistic and it was looking at if we took from the Hobbit, Lord of the Rings, Smaug, and try to convert that into... do an estimate of his wealth in like real term wealth, he would actually only, still be like the fifth billionaire in the world. And this is like a literal dragon sitting on a pile of gold. If you translated that to real-world wealth, Smaug would not be the richest creature.
ash alberg: [00:46:22] That is wild to me. Oh my god. And then I think of like the Gates family who are now, they're divorcing, but they are worth billions and billions of dollars. And that in and of itself is like for me, I'm like, okay, there are people... the problem is that there are people that work for some of the companies that they oversee and have control over, there are people who are working for less than minimum wage. That is a problem. That should never be the case, but also if you're going to --
ana campos: [00:46:55] That’s another thing that pisses me off. My small business, I pay more than minimum wage and I, and I barely make above minimum wage myself. And so I look at that and I'm like, okay, if I can afford in my small business, and I say this part loosely, but I, I hire people starting out at $15 an hour. I'm not a millionaire. And so like, why is Amazon not doing that? Why is Microsoft not doing that?
ash alberg: [00:47:19] Right? Exactly. Like there, and especially when it's okay, when you have executives who their bonus is, it's nine figure bonuses in some of these big tech corps. And that's your bonus. That's not your salary. That's just the extra.
Like you could literally take that bonus, cut it in half, take the half and split it amongst all of the staff that are making minimum wage to raise them up to just living wage and that person would still have way more money than they ever need in their entire life. But it's, but then if you are in the position where, the, just the basic structure and capitalism has resulted in you having that kind of money, then at least do something good with it, right? Like there, the Gates' give away a huge portion of their money and their foundation reinvests massive amounts of dollars in different important areas of the world.
And there are people who give away half of their income and they still end up with way more than they personally need, but they are reinvesting into the world and into community in a way that is helpful. And I think if we all function from that space, then the world would be a lot healthier probably.
ana campos: [00:48:38] And I know that it sounds like we've gone off on a huge tangent off of witchcraft, but to me, witchcraft and social responsibility are absolutely completely linked and you can't extricate them.
ash alberg: Yes.
ana campos: I think that to me, being a witch means that you have a responsibility to like the world, to nature, to others, and to taking care of the world and because of the way that the world is structured now, we can't be divorced from economics and politics. Like I can't just sit here in my house and be like, I'm a witch and I have my crystal and I lit my candle and that's it.
Like in reality, that's not who the witches are. That's not who the, the shamans, to use that word, but that like the spiritual leaders of communities, they were the bridge between the spirit world and the physical world and helping us live in harmony with our surroundings.
And so we still have that responsibility. Like we can't call ourselves, witches and not recycle and not give a crap about our community. Otherwise, like, really it's just like, masturbatory if
you're just like, by yourself being like I'm a witch with all my pretty crystals and you don't care, like, what else is happening around you! So I very much think that social justice and witchcraft have to go hand in hand.
ash alberg: [00:49:49] Yup. Yup. I completely agree. And it's funny too, because I do often find that is what happens with a lot of... there's a lot more witches in my experience on the left and in social justice movements than what I see. And that could also just be like the bubble that I am existing in. But I think what's also really interesting is like, when we look at that like scarcity mindset on that, like "Me Me Me" focused mindset and within the realm of magic and magic history and the, like, the practices that have been maintained and passed down versus the ones that are identified as being like, this was a not good period of history for us. We should leave that in the past. There is a complete correlation between the kind of magick that was being put out into the world in terms of hexes and in terms of curses.
And when we are looking at, and I put this in quotations, but bad witches versus good witches, the bad witches and the bad magick is very much attached to hexing and cursing specifically from a selfish point, right? Like the like nasty magick that like you walk into a space and you're like, wow, there's some foul old energy sitting here, is pretty much always if it's still lingering it's because it was just so horrific and completely selfish in the way that it was done.
Like it's... it's not consensual, it's not taking into account, " What is this impact going to be on others?" It is like the, it's ultimately what ends up with the witch hunts and everything. Those were completely just people being nasty with each other and something going wrong and then blaming others for it. And then people's fear then just exacerbating it massively, but ...
ana campos: [00:51:49] Honestly, that happened a whole lot here in Salem.
ash alberg: [00:51:51] Yes. Yeah, exactly. Oh man. Aaron Mankey did a totally fascinating... he's got the Unobscured podcast and I think it was the first season was focused on Salem. And I really appreciated it because it's like... frequently when people talk about Salem, then like they talk about it in a very cursory, like single level way, but in reality, and I think this is also again where like social justice, like we can't divorce these things from one another.
The impact of what the economy was at the time in Salem and the social structures in Salem, like those were so tied into then what literally happened and the way that these people were accused and died. Like they were murdered because of these social structures that are now still in place today!
Like it's still the same thing of scarcity mindset and what is the economy doing and what are these social structures doing and where is there fear or where is somebody being identified as being an other and are they considered a threat because they are an other? And we just, we just keep on repeating the same fucking patterns, but it's yeah, there's... we can't separate out witchcraft and witchcraft history and witchcraft present from these other parts of the world. Like it doesn't exist in a vacuum.
ana campos: [00:53:14] And the thing with Salem is, Salem has become a metaphor for the persecution of the weak and the oppressed but the part that we don't even talk about is that even that history that we tell is a colonialist history, because we don't talk about the fact that this was Naumkeag land. There was a tribe that lived here, and the Naumkeag were struggling at the time that (Roger) Conant came to Salem and they were looking to make contact with the colonizers and teach and share.
The Naumkeag were friendly and they were thinking, they likely believe that these white folks arriving were someone that they could create a positive relationship with and they're all dead. And white folks came to Salem, killed the Indigenous people, established their own community and then went on to kill the most vulnerable of their own community.
So there's a history of doing that over and over. And that's one of the reasons why I do a lot of shamanic work in Salem because there's so much energetic, just injury...
ash alberg: [00:54:07] Yyeeess.
ana campos: [00:54:08] And people come to Salem being like "I'm here to explore me." And
I'm like, where are the people who are coming to Salem to heal Salem?
ash alberg: [00:54:14] Yes, the land around that region... When I came to visit you, then we had many conversations about this, but holy shit, is that land ever haunted! Oh my goodness! And it's yeah, if there's no effort being placed in reconciliation, in like contemporary or in modern spaces, and also we are not working to heal the old wounds, then that energy just stays and it becomes really stagnant and festers in just the most horrific ways. And it's very unhealthy and the land gets very angry.
ana campos: [00:54:53] Yeah. I mean, before COVID, one of the things that I was doing is, I actually managed to talk to the director of the Witch House, which is now a tourist attraction here in Salem, and I was holding shamanic journeys there. And, like, from a marketing touristy perspective, like that sounds cute, but let's look at what that really means from a spiritual side, right?
The Witch House wasn't actually owned by witches. It was owned by one of the judges who was persecuting witches, right? So it's actually the opposite of the Witch House. It's like the witch persecution house. And so to me, it's very interesting to then be going into this home, that was the home of someone who was persecuting witches, and I say witches very loosely 'cause they obviously weren't actually witches, they were just women and people who were demonized.
But so going into this space where there was so much hate, active planning of persecuting people and then being able to go in there and being like look what I'm doing now, I'm coming into this space and I'm practicing witchcraft here and I'm bringing people together to communicate with the spirits of Salem and try and heal it. So to me, even though it looks like a cutesy touristy marketing thing, like it's a spiritually subversive thing to be doing.
ash alberg: [00:55:47] Totally, it's like a massive “fuck you” to the history.
ana campos: [00:55:50] Right?
ash alberg: [00:55:51] Which is just so necessary. Oh my goodness. And then yeah. I mean it's... yeah, just the history of all that. And you make a really good point of the histories that we tell are still just small bits of the histories, right? It's the, and it's the, I'm putting this in quotations, but the winners of history are the ones that ultimately write history and--
ana campos: [00:56:11] Yeah. History told through the lens of the victor. It's always--
ash alberg: [00:56:13] Exactly. Exactly. And there were slaves who were part of the persecuted folks within... within the... within the Salem witch trials, but their names are not ...
ana campos: [00:56:23] Yeah, Tituba, yeah.
ash alberg: [00:56:25] Yeah, yeah.
It's just... anyway some solid sidetracks here, but that is okay. Okay.
I feel like we've gone on many little circles and tangents, which I love, and I guess in theory, we should start wrapping down but ... Soooo we'll just go on a few more tangents before we end, but can you tell me something that you wish someone had told you when you were younger about magick or ritual or witchcraft?
ana campos: [00:56:51] Honestly? So when you first told me that was going to be one of the questions, I was like, oh god, what am I going to say? But honestly, I would, I wish people had told me is that being a witch is an option, because I grew up not knowing that I could choose to be a witch, like I honestly, like I saw those characters in fiction and fairytales and I was like, oh, I want to be that! But I grew up... I knew... like I grew up Catholic, I was an altar girl because I loved ritual always from a very young age --
ash alberg: [00:57:15] Catholicism so ritualistic.
ana campos: [00:57:17] Yeah, Catholicism, mega witchy, okay? ash alberg: So witchy!
ana campos: Anyway I grew up Catholic and I became an altar girl and I was so dedicated. Like my mom was like, I am not getting up to take her to church on Sundays. I would ride my bike...
ash alberg: [00:57:27] Wow!
ana campos: [00:57:28] ...to take myself to church. Yeah. And then I, I started realizing I'm very devoted, but like they treat women like shit. And I kinda just don't agree with this. And in my world view, like I, you know, I knew Christians, I knew Jewish folks, I have part of my family's Jewish. And then I heard about atheism and I that was all I knew.
And so I was like I don't want to be Catholic anymore. I can't like, I'm not Jewish. So I guess maybe I'm an atheist now? Which never made sense because I never stopped believing in
spirit. And so, it's just knowing that, hey, there's other things I can do spiritually would have been awesome.
ash alberg: [00:58:02] Yep. Yep. That's totally fair. My goodness. But at least you figured it out when we're a teenager and snuck out of the house.
ana campos: [00:58:09] Yeah.
ash alberg: [00:58:10] Love it. So what is next for you? What's coming out for Circle of
Stitches? This is going to come out the week of Lammas or Lughnasadh. Yeah. Tell us what...
ana campos: [00:58:19] Last fall, I came up with the idea of doing my fiber witch boxes, and honestly, it was a last minute idea that I was like, oh, I'm gonna do something fun for Samhain, everyone's in quarantine, let's do this thing. And so, it picked up steam on its own and I've continued doing them.
What we'll be looking forward to when this episode airs is we'll have our, our Mabon box and we'll have actually, no, I'm not, I'm saying that. I'm not sure if we have a Mabon box but there's definitely a Samhain box coming which will be super special and wonderful. And, after that, there will be a winter solstice box.
So those are always in the works. And lots of workshops and all that kind of good stuff. I'm always teaching new tarot workshops. I'm actually working on a workshop on tarot and sacred sexuality that hopefully will be out by then.
ash alberg: [00:59:04] Cooool, that sounds awesome.
ana campos: [00:59:08] Yes. I very much believe in orgasms as a form of empowerment
witchcraft, so you know... More on that to come.
ash alberg: [00:59:13] Yes! Oh, I like this. [Cackles.] [Ana snickers.]
So good. So we'll make sure that we stick those links into ...into the... into the show notes. And is there anything else that you want to share with us? We'll make sure also that folks know where to get in touch with you and how to order online. And if people are ordering from outside of the States, can they order direct on the website at this point? Are there certain kind of ....
ana campos: [00:59:39] Yes. We ship worldwide, internationally, automatically done through our website. So we're happy to provide witchy and fiber events to folks all over the place.
ash alberg: [00:59:48] So good. So good. That's fantastic. I'm so excited. Thank you for sharing your wisdom with me and with us. And I am very excited for this episode to be launching, to helping launch the podcast as a whole. And probably we're just going to need to come back and do a follow-up episode in a future season.
So yes.
ana campos: [01:00:09] Thank you so much for having me. I hope folks have found this interesting, and I guess the advice that I leave people with as far as their practice, I very
much believe that practice needs to be systems of direct revelation. Don't take anything that I'm saying as a given, go and experience it yourself.
ash alberg: [01:00:24] Yup. Yup. So important. Thanks, my love. This has been really delightful. I appreciate your time.
ana campos: [01:00:31] Thank you.
You can find Ana online@circleofstitches.com and on Instagram at circle stitches.
ash alberg: [01:00:41] [Upbeat music playing.] You can find full episode recordings and transcripts at snortandcackle.com, just click on podcast in the main menu. Follow Snort and Cackle on Instagram @snortandcackle, and join our seasonal book club with #SnortandCackleBookClub. Don't forget to subscribe and review the podcast via your favorite podcasting platform.
Editing provided by Noah Gilroy, recording and mixing by Ash Alberg, music by Yesable.