season 3, episode 13 - #snortandcacklebookclub book review - "brujas: the magic and power of witches of color"

it's the end of season 3 and time for the #snortandcacklebookclub book review! this season's book was "brujas: the magic and power of witches of color" by lorraine monteagut.

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transcript

snort & cackle - season 3, episode 13 - book review - "brujas: the magic and power of witches of color" by lorraine monteagut

ash alberg: [Upbeat music plays.] Hello, and welcome to the Snort and Cackle podcast. I'm your host, Ash Alberg. I'm a queer fibre witch and hedgewitch. 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 Brujas: The Magic and Power of Witches of Color by Lorraine Monteagut.

Whether you're an aspiring boss witch looking to start your knitwear design business, a plant witch looking to play more with your local naturally dyed color palette or a knit witch wondering just what the hell is a natural yarn and how do you use it in your favorite patterns, we've got the solution for you.

Take the free fiber witch quiz at ashalberg.com/quiz and find out which self-paced online program will help you take your dreams into reality. Visit ashalberg.com/quiz [upbeat music fades out] and then join fellow fiber witches in the Creative Coven Community at ashalberg.com/creative-coven-community for 24/7 access to Ash’s favorite resources, monthly zoom knit nights, and more. [End of intro.]

Hello, everyone. This is take bajillion of our final episode for season three of Snort and Cackle, which of course is our book review episode. And this season, our book club book was Brujas: The Magic and Power of Witches of Color by Lorraine Monteagut, and it's fantastic. So if you haven't had a chance to read it yet, I highly recommend going, pausing this episode, going and reading it.

It shouldn't take you too long. It took me half a day to read it. And it's ... it's honestly great. And I say take bajillionth because I have been trying to capture

in a succinct way, and if you've been listening to this podcast for any chunk of time, I'm not great at being succinct anyway.

But I've been trying to capture in a fairly succinct way my response to this book. And it's just me this time. I don't have a co-host this particular episode. Which is maybe part of why I feel like I'm not doing it justice. And so I'm just going to state that ... actually, maybe I just need to stay that right off the top: I am not going to do this book justice.

You should absolutely be going and reading it yourself. You can find e-book versions, you can find audio book versions, you can find hard copy versions. But I do really encourage you to go and read it yourself.

Obviously, like there's just the obvious gap, which is that I am not a witch of color. I don't have that experience. I am white, my ancestors are white. They come from different areas. But they are still white, so there's an obvious gap right there. But I think also what this book does really beautifully is it digs into the messiness that is living with a complicated identity and frequently in this book that comes up as being from a mixed-race background.

And so, I think in particular folks who are reading, who live in Canada or the States, mainland States, are really going to see themselves in this. Most of the rituals and backgrounds that the author, as well as the case studies come from are coming from Afro Latinx backgrounds. They're coming from Cuba and Haiti and Puerto Rico and living in Florida.

And so it's, lots of hoodoo and voodoo and Santería and that kind of stuff. And so you can definitely go and listen to some of our earlier episodes that cover some of those practices. And this book is not one that is specifically going to take you through “this is how you do X, Y, and Z for each of these practices.” This book rather is a collection of like personal essays as well as not anthropological case studies, but it's ... feels academic in so much as there are footnotes and a great recommended reading list and lots of citing different people.

But it's not academic in the way that a lot of academic work feels very inaccessible and very just not ... it doesn't flow well with the language. This one feels very conversational and also gives the earned weight to people's personal experiences that frequently are not given as much validity within academia as they should.

Having gone through academia myself, way more than I needed to, getting an institution that is just really a bastion of the kyriarchy, if we're being completely honest, getting it to recognize that somebody's lived experience counts as much and/or more than what statistics state is not always the easiest thing. And this book does a really good job of that, I think. So it's really good.

It's also, it's a step in, right? Like she makes a really clear indication right from the get-go that this is not the book on brujas or brujx. It is a book and it is a stepping stone and an entry point into bruja magic which is ... it's this medicine that is inherently political and also beautifully every day and is accessible honestly, to everyone in some way or another.

Which is not to say that I, as a white person, I'm going to go and start studying Santería. That's not what I'm saying. [Chuckles.] Please go and read the book. But it does give a lot of really great indicators and steps I suppose, or suggestions for how to build your own ancestor practice. I think that's maybe part of it or a key component of it, is that it relies heavily on ancestor practice, which also includes the messiness of shadow work which is in actually looking at your ... either your, or your family’s or your community’s patterns of harm and hurt and facing those things head on and actually doing the work to heal.

And that's where the bruja magic comes in, which is in doing that hard work. And in doing that, the magic that we practice to keep ourselves safe. And then also that our ancestors make a point of bringing up to us over and over again as we work to become aware enough to heal those family wounds so that then the next ... our descendants can be better and can exist without that family trauma being passed down along through the line.

There's a lot of stories in the book that really hinge on family trauma and family hurt and the role that colonialism plays in that, the role that war plays in that, the role that revolution plays in that. And also the role that shitty humans play in it as well, or humans who do harmful things because they haven't learned any better themselves.

It's ... yeah, it's a tricksy one. And so I think that's why in particular it's a book that makes things feel more accessible to anyone regardless of what your background is because realistically, very few of us have clean, simple identities. We might like to pretend that we do but most of the time, when you look at the intersectionality of your oppression and privilege, even if you have a lot of things being ticked off on one side of the equation, there's probably at least one or two ticked off on the other side of the equation.

And that doesn't negate the weight of the one side or the other. But it does make it a lot trickier than white supremacy in the kyriarchy would like us to think that things are. And also for folks that have, that live more in these liminal spaces, whether that's because they're queer or trans or non-binary or because they are mixed race or and then if you're mixed race, then you know, whether you are enough of one or too much of another, or not enough of something else to fit into whatever community. And based on that, then whether you are celebrated for one thing while excluded for another.

It's all a lot more complicated than tick boxes on a census form would like us to believe. And so that also makes it sometimes trickier, honestly, to figure out what rituals and what ancestral practices feel like something that you can access and what do we have a right to? And what is it to feel like you have a right to anything?

Overall I really liked this book. The way that the book is structured is in 12 different chapters. At the end of each chapter there it follows through the role or the order of the Zodiac. And at the end of each chapter is then a sign which indicates the house that the book is in. And in theory it takes us a fairly consistently through that journey.

I don't, I would say that's some chapters were more obvious than others in connecting to whichever house it was but it was a fun way of adding things in. I would say probably the biggest gap that I felt I noticed was there were a couple of points where there was a talk about the caricature of the witch, and so at the very beginning was a mention of a Halloween caricature, but it did not mention the part where that Halloween caricature is also incredibly antisemitic and rooted in antisemitism actually, like fully.

And if this book had been written let's say five years ago, honestly, I probably could have been like, oh yeah, that's okay. Nobody was really talking about that now, or then, but in the last chunk of time and yes, the book was published in at the end of 2021. It was also written through COVID and written into 2021 so I do think that it bears mentioning that the Halloween caricature of the witch is one that in the last number of years, we have started to point out is antisemitic. And so I think it bears mentioning here ‘cause it felt like a weird gap considering how well fleshed out so much of the rest of the book felt most of the time.

There was also another caricature mentioned near to the end of the book and it felt like a similar situation where it was like, yes, it's caricature. And we're not actually addressing why it's a caricature, and it feels like this is a book where

that reference point wouldn't come out of nowhere. It would feel like a natural part of that conversation.

Maybe there's so many words that need to be delivered or whatever. It ... yeah. Anyway. So I think in particular though, overall, it did a really great job of covering things. And I think it will be particularly good read for queer folks and by that I don't mean gay and queer. And for folks of mixed ancestry. And I say that because in both cases, we're experiencing more of this liminal space that it feels a lot messier and when you don't quite fit into an exact box ... which is why I mentioned, I don't mean for gay folks also of course, are going to get things out of it.

I'm not saying that, if you don't have whatever X, Y, Z identity, that you're not going to get something out of this book, because that's literally the opposite of what I'm saying. And also the opposite of what this book points out. As the book points out, we all have stories and ancestral wounds that need healing and ways of learning to be better engaged with our practice and with our politics so that we can be a better ancestor or transcestor for our own descendants.

I think this book does a really beautiful job of that. It's also why I think that specifically, because it does such a good job of handling that liminal space, that for queer non-binary folks, as well as folks with mixed ancestry, you're going to get more out of it because you're gonna see that gap that ... the space where you fall in, where you're not enough of one thing and not, and too much of something else that you’ll see yourself in more of the stories.

And I think that then can be helpful when you're trying to figure out, okay what is the ancestor work that I'm doing? What is the ceremonial work that I want to do? What is the ritual that I can be doing? What is my work? What is my purpose of being here? And how do I do that work so that then I can be of greater help to the collective?

And that also is a key point of the book is coming back to doing that self care, rooting back into yourself, going back to the bones of you and making sure that they are solid before then building out and out and out. But not in the like, love and light, positivity only, white feminist version of the shit. And ... or of the like Insta-witch version of what all of this looks like.

Because a bath can be super lovely, but if the reason that you're doing the bath is because you want to avoid the shadow work that you need to be doing to heal your attachment wounds and you don't want to go to therapy because that's going to be too scary.

That's, it's your choice. It's your prerogative. Maybe you're not ready, but also, and also, you are going to stay stuck at whatever stage you're at until you're willing to do the work to move on to the next stage.

And I say that as though it's easy. It is obviously not. I am extremely aware of this myself. I've been dealing with my own mental health issues for, I guess my whole life. Definitely through my entire adult life. COVID has been shit and also really useful.

I've done way more shadow work in the last, I'd say two and a half years. Less than that. Two and a bit years than I had done in probably the 10 years prior to. But it's necessary work. And as this book points out you need to be doing that work in order to then get yourself to a stage where you can be like truly useful to the collective and the long-term, where you can make your magic and make your activism be sustainable.

And I think, yeah, it's a good point for everyone. And it also is one where it reminds you that no matter what kind of privilege you have or what amount of privilege you have, it is still important that you are doing that self care that involves that self work. And also that if you have a lot of privilege that you need to be doing that work so that you can help to take the burden off of others on a more consistent basis.

And that if you have less of the privilege that you are prioritizing yourself and prioritizing your health, because that is honestly going to be one of the biggest fuck yous to the system. Embracing joy. There's a one case study in particular where the artist and witch involved really embodies joy as resistance and that feels just very relevant and very relatable.

In queer circles, it's a thing that we do our best to hold onto. From what I see of witches of color circles, similar thing. And it's because the kyriarchy wants to take joy away. It wants to make everything seem hard and also a really good point that the author makes at one point is that capitalism made her think that she needed everything all at once, where she needed the family, the job, the car, the house, all of it needed to happen all at the same time.

And that's rarely what happens. And it also is not necessarily what we actually need or want. And if we take the moment to recognize, what is the joy in our current life, that doesn't mean that you're not striving for something else or that you're not trying to make the world better or that you're not trying to improve your space in life and your family's space in life and your community’s space in life.

That's not, it's not that you're saying there's nothing better for us. But there is this beautiful resistance and resilience and radiance that comes from looking at here's what I've got. These are the beautiful things of it and I want more of those beautiful things.

One of the quotes that I loved the most about this book comes back to the quote, “Capitalism rarely centers care.” And I think ultimately this book really does a good job of addressing that particular thing. And in recognizing that the system is fucked, we are fucked within the system and there's ways that we can fuck with the system.

And so the bruja magic and medicine is a really specific way of doing that, where you're using this ancestral magic and tapping into family stories and healing family wounds and doing beautiful activist frontline work that is centering joy, that is centering resilience and is centering lived experience and the mess of that lived experience.

And that experience contains diversity inherently within it. There's no single monolithic way of being a brujx or of being a witch of any sort. Mimicking your favorite Instagram witch is not going to actually be your authentic way of doing witching regardless of whether, like how similar your lives might seem to be. But I think the really lovely thing about what the book lays out is that there are so many ways to make magic and there are so many ways to heal those wounds and there are so many ways to take the pain in our lives and take the fucked up things that have happened to us and/or to our families and to the world in general and to work on making amends.

And that it, there's not a 100% only this way. It's not an this or situation. It's a this and situation or this and/or that where maybe you are a non-Indigenous settler and you can't change the policies or the laws that have resulted in you have land ownership at a particular point in time, now in these modern days. But there are ways for you to pay rent to the local Indigenous communities whose land you are living on. And there are ways of stewarding the land that you are living on and making amends to the soil and to the land so that you are healing those old wounds because holy fuck does the land ever hold on to those wounds.

And where we can be nurturing the soil. There's a really beautiful chapter in the book that talks about a witch who literally tends to the soil as their practice. They are a plant witch who's, who teaches others to be in relation with the plants, which is the complete opposite of what white supremacy wants and what capitalism wants, which is purely extractive relationships.

And where this is being in relation with the soil is to care for the soil and recognizing that this is the way that Indigenous communities have always tended to the soil and that if you go far enough back, most communities around the world, that was how folks functioned. Capitalism has changed that, of course, but there are ways that we can relatively easily take back at least little portions of our worlds from capitalism's claws.

And I think the thing that I appreciate about how the book wraps itself up is the emphasis on long-term mutual aid being a more important focus than having a fear response to emergency, because I feel like that is a natural, it's a natural thing. When COVID started and people freaked out and some people went out and hoarded all of the toilet paper, like that is a perfect example of a fear response to emergency.

And we can perhaps recognize that in ourselves, we can perhaps empathize with that sensation, but I think there's a really clear ... It's not clear, I'm sorry. That's the opposite. It's a fine line that is not always clear, but once we've tipped over it, it becomes more clear that you've tipped over. Whether or not you can pull yourself back as a whole other thing.

When you’re worrying about you and/or your immediate family's safety and/or your immediate community’s safety and the way that you respond to that is to horde things or to harm others and strike out others rather than to reach out with love and offer out with love. When we, look at war, honestly, so often war is a result of greed and the result of really fucked up systems that tip power in ways that shouldn't happen.

But then for the folks that are on the ground, the resilience and the resistance comes from not knowing where the next meal is going to be, but then having somebody show up on your doorstep starving and sharing what little food that you do have, or offering them a bed, or helping somebody who is injured to get into a safe spot and applying a dressing, or opening your homes to people who need ... or checking in on the more vulnerable folks in your lives, right?

Like at the pandemic, when it started, yes, you had those folks that went out and hoarded all the toilet paper. You also had the folks that made a point of checking in on their elderly neighbors, because they knew that they were more at risk and didn't have the ability to go to the grocery store because they were already housebound.

And folks would go and check in and make sure that people were doing okay. Or after a storm when people will check in and see, do you have water? Do you

have power? Do you have heat? Come to our house, we have heat, you can cook your meal here.

I think the world's a hard place to live more often than it's not. And also I think that there's a lot of beauty. And I think what I appreciate about this book is that for all of the terrible stories that are shared, for all of the abuse and the violent racism and the war and the assaults and the just general shittiness that can be humanity more often than we care to admit, there's also this like string of hope through it.

And this constant coming back to, “I don't have the answer, but I think this might be the next best thing to do. The next right. The next best right thing.” And maybe that's all that we can plan for is not having the answer and not knowing how to fix the thing, or even if it can be fixed or what a fix could look like, but to try anyway, and to trust that the universe will give you a chance to try again if you fuck it up.

And if you don't do it, that the universe’ll bring it along to the next generation so that they can try. Maybe it's like being on a hamster wheel, but I honestly think that when the universe decides or your ancestors say, okay, we've got this wound, it's your turn, give it a shot. I think that there is progress that is made when somebody finally steps up and looks at their shadow in the corner and says, okay, yeah, let's try this. Let's see what we can do here, and gives it an honest go. I think that there's progress that's made there.

And it doesn't mean that we fix everything. It doesn't mean that we change the course of humanity necessarily. Doesn't mean that we stop all of the racism and the transphobia and the brutality and the witch hunts, literal ones. It doesn't change all of that, but it's a start. And I think those signs of hope and that hunt for joy as resistance and that belief that we can do better.

Is really important, especially now, especially in this world that we live in right now. The more access we have to information, the more we realize how shitty humans are. And so I think it's really important to remember that we can do better and that even if we can't fix everything, we can still try to improve a thing and then trying to improve the next thing. And that's really important.

A couple more notes on this book that I highly recommend everybody go and read because y'all are gonna get a lot more out of it than just my rambling thoughts on it. And particularly for actual brujas, you're going to be like, wow, you missed all of these things. I'm going to be like, yep. I did. Sorry. It was great.

But another thing that I think is really useful about this book is the number of great resources throughout the book. There is like a bibliography recommended reading section at the end, but also through the whole book, there's just constant name dropping and constant “check this person out, check this business out, check these people out, check out these Instagram pages, check out these people's Patreons, check out these people's online stores, check out those brick-and-mortar store, book this person for that reading.”

And it's beautiful. It is also something that I honestly see a lot more frequently from witches of color than I do from white witches. And just like generally within activist circles, similar thing, like I see activists of color being a lot more forthcoming with sharing names and dropping handles and things like that, and not in a way where it's like, oh look who I know, but in a way where it's, this is a great resource. This person taught me a lot. This person's really smart. You should go and continue your studies with this person.

You want to learn more about that? Go and read this person's work. You want to buy a thing, go and support this person's store. And it's that epitome of shine theory, which comes from the authors of slash podcasters of Big Friendship. But it also is this like very direct challenge to cancel culture’s ... which honestly, I feel these days that cancel culture has become a bit of a tool of white supremacy and capitalism, and the kyriarchy in general where it's oh, we're going to make people who are already ... white people, I am talking to you slash us. They're already uncomfortable.

But also this extends to anybody with privilege in particular, already uncomfortable with being uncomfortable. And I get it, the nervous system does not necessarily differentiate between whether you're actually being chased by a tiger or whether the person who tweeted a thing at you or made a slightly more blunt comment calling you in, maybe, possibly calling you out on a thing that you fucked up.

Your nervous system doesn't necessarily recognize the difference. It just sees both situations as a threat because as communal species, we have developed to see anything that challenges our space within community as being a threat to our livelihood. That's the lizard part of your brain. That's the like, child part of your brain.

The adult part of your brain needs to fucking come on board and recognize that the way that we grow is by fucking up and you are going to fuck up. That is part of the human experience. It is exponentially better to fuck up and then to try

again. And between those two things, there may be a chunk of making amends and that's part of the process too.

And I feel like people have started ... and I don't fully blame folks for feeling this way. I definitely battle the same impulse myself on a semi-regular basis of if I show up in too big of a way, somebody's gonna get mad and they're gonna do something, which is, that's one portion of it. I think more frequently the fear is if I try and do something good, but then I fuck up and I do something wrong and I hurt somebody that makes me bad.

And I'm not bad. So I'm just, I'm not going to do anything that puts that at risk. I don't want to put my self identity as being a good person at risk by doing anything that makes me uncomfortable, which is directly playing into the kyriarchy's palm because there's a lot of shitty things out there that we need to be calling out.

And if you do something shitty, whether you meant to or not, you need to be accountable, right? Like intent is not the same as impact. And maybe you didn't mean to hurt somebody, but if you do, even if it's ... I was talking to my therapist about this recently and she's, even if somebody, even if you're not, if you don't agree with somebody about a thing and it's 90% their thing, right? Like they get mad at you for something it's clear that you have triggered an old wound.

They have not dealt with that old wound. They're not processing that old wound as being an old wound. They are just mad at you. That's 90% their thing. There's still 10% of it that is yours. And that 10% you can do something about, and maybe you have boundaries around how you deal with that 10%. Maybe you say, look, this is my 10%.

I'm not going to take 20% of your shit. That's not actually mine to do, that's yours to do and you need to do that because that is going to help you to improve and get better as a human. But you still have to take responsibility for that 10%. Like you're not completely blameless most of the time.

Obviously, situations of abuse, et cetera, are not ... that's different scenario. I think, one of the like most insidious parts of this fear of fucking up and so therefore I won't say anything or I won't share the name of somebody that I have learned from for fear that maybe in the future, they're going to do something shitty and I’ll be associated with them and then I'm going to get in trouble.

Which like, to be fair, is honestly the way that Instagram often seems to work these days. And I'm sure that Twitter is even worse. And there is this like really bizarre phenomenon for lack of a better word these days where somebody does something, two people work together, collaborate together or somebody learns from somebody and maybe you don't have that much interaction but then that person goes and does something several years later, or maybe many years later, and you being associated with them from that many years ago is now like a black mark on your record of things.

And it's, it's bizarre. It's not really fair. I think a lot of times it's rooted in performative activism, honestly. But it's this like really insidious thing because it stops people, which is also why I think it has been weaponized by the kyriarchy very like sneakily because people are now so scared of cancel culture and just view everything as being cancel culture, whether it is or not, like there, there is a difference when somebody is calling you in and is doing the emotional labor to like actually call you in, that is a gift.

If somebody is saying, “Look, you fucked up, think about this instead,” they're giving you the gift of assuming that you can do better and they're offering you the chance to do better. That's not always necessarily the way that it might feel or the way that it may come off. And for sure there are some folks that like, they're not actually interested in you doing better. They just want to call you out.

There's a difference between calling out and calling in. But when we look at harm reduction and when we look at mutual aid and community care, calling in is a really important part of the practice and calling out is the shitty version that works well when we're dealing with like large institutions of powerful people becomes a lot less useful once it starts being tossed across laterally or alternatively, where it's now tossing down, like with jokes and punching up is one thing, punching down is not okay.

It's a really weird metaphor now that I think about it. Anyway. So, you know, what I have found more frequently with activists of color and witches of color through these books that we've been reading is that there's a lot more positive name dropping that happens and it's because there's this recognition that like, we don't have enough resources that are made clear, and this is how we share that information. This is how we help people to go along their journeys and to gain more knowledge.

And it's also this like really beautiful fuck you to what white supremacy honestly tries to do, which is to wipe out all resemblance, all existence of others and colonialism, same thing, where the goal of colonialism is to wipe out all

remnants of what existed before and replace it with it, and a very specific version of itself and that's it.

And so I particularly appreciate this this fuck you of, we're not going to be erased. We are going to share each other's names. We are going to support one another. We are going to build this community and be vocal about the people that we believe in and that we are trusting to keep doing good work, as we will continue doing good work.

I think that there's a really beautiful, very radical, and I mean that in terms of the roots activism from that. Queers are ... we see so little of ourselves in history and same for BIPOC folks. There's one case study in the book where the person is literally a member of an Indigenous tribe that was listed as being extinct.

And actually a friend of mine as part of a different tribe that is, was listed as being extinct. It's this like really beautiful fuck you to those colonialist white supremacist capitalist powers of, we're going to erase these people that we determine are not fitting into the boxes that we want. And to say, nope, we're still here. Fuck you.

I think that is something that folks will probably really enjoy. And if nothing else, even if you're like, I don't want to go down a bajillion different rabbit holes. I'm not actually interested in studying all of these different practices, if nothing else finding a fabulous botanica in your neighborhood, if you're looking for a botanica or responsibly sourced crystals for your witchcraft practice, that is a lovely thing.

And so the fact that there are multiple ones listed in this book are great. So there's that. I guess I'm going to wrap things up ‘cause this ... I don't know that I have actually been that helpful with this book review episode.

So I apologize if I haven't done it justice. I'm sure that I have not. But it's really fantastic. And I'm going to end with a pop culture reference, which might make some of you roll your eyes and might make some of you go like Ash, what the fuck?

But I feel like you’ll ... you want to read this book and then you also want to watch Encanto. [Laugh-snorts.] And maybe this is going to be a terrible pop culture reference, but I'm not actually saying it because it's so on the nose, like the author has Colombian ancestry, multiple folks who made up case studies have Colombian ancestry.

That's not actually what I'm drawing on, but what I am pointing to with that reference is that you are dealing with ancestral family-rooted magic that is at risk because of silence and because of trauma that was experienced by older generations and that then feeds down through the generations and “We Don't Talk About Bruno.” Yes, it's a song that I have been told from my friends who have kiddos because I don't, and so I just get to enjoy Disney songs without hearing them at nauseum on repeat. [Snort-laughs.] Apparently, that's a really popular song right now, but it, it's directly speaking to one of the core issues that the book also speaks to, which is that family trauma that is done and that forces people to shut down in order to survive. And then just not speak about it. It has these effects that then pass through generations.

We're starting to see scientifically, like it actually passes through RNA but it also passes through in the way ... not, it's not just through genetics, it's also through the way that people nurture or don't nurture. And then that has a ripple effect. And it takes a lot for somebody to stand up to that and to try and break that cycle. And it's possible, but imagine if we lived in a world where that wasn't necessary and where ancestral wounds, they didn't exist to begin with.

I was saying recently to someone about how I honestly don't know what it would have been like to have been raised by ... not children of the Holocaust. Or the results of the Holocaust. I just, I don't know what that would have been like. I don't know what it would have been like to have grandparents who spoke about their youth.

I don't know what it would have been like to have grandparents who were not fleeing war or who didn't have to go off to war. And I got really fucking lucky in the parent department, honestly, and my grandparents for all their trauma, they were very loving. They told some stories and my parents did make a point of breaking certain cycles.

And I'm very grateful for them and I'm sure that I will continue going and breaking different cycles. And I would hope that my kiddos and my descendants also go and break cycles. We all have cycles that we can be ... and I feel like when we have less ancestral trauma that we are trying to break, it also makes it easier to then deal more head-on with our own trauma.

Like we don't get through life unscathed. And I recognize also that there's a lot of privilege in what I just said, because realistically, there are many people who have generations and generations of very direct, ongoing trauma as a result of systemic oppressions that continue to try their fucking best to keep them in that cycle of trauma. And it's so much harder to break free of those things.

I think that finding an ancestor practice and/or figuring out ways of connecting to your own version of bruja medicine, whether that's actually bruja/brujx medicine, because that's your own ancestral medicine or the equivalent of it for whatever is ancestral for you. I think that's a really great place to start.

My apologies again for doing a not great job, honestly, of recapping this book. I think it's great. I think you should go and read it. I think also you're going to get a lot more out of the book by reading it than just listening to this rambly, this rambly episode.

And I hope that you find it useful. And I hope that for the feminist witches listening here, regardless of what your own smattering of identities looks like, that you are able to take something out of the book in terms of how to make your witchcraft more sustainable than it already is, how to make your daily rituals feel more sustainable, how to find joy as resistance and resilience.

And that you figure out, what is the next best right thing for you in your life and in your journey which then will hopefully help to heal the collective. Thanks so much for listening and we'll be back in a couple of weeks with season four. And yeah, thanks so much for listening.

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Editing provided by Noah Gilroy, recording and mixing by Ash Alberg, music by Yesable.