Only THREE DAYS LEFT to join the Missing Witches Reparations Fundraiser! May 31st is the LAST DAY to make a donation and enter the draw for fabulous prizes!!
It's not a gift, it's a debt.
In this episode, Amy and Risa sit down to talk origin stories: their friendship, their Witchcraft, their collaborations, the MW project, their Reparations Fundraiser. It's an origin story and a Love Story. It's a story of taking What Ifs, combining them with friendship, imagination and faith to turn ideas into realities.
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TRANSCRIPT
Amy: [00:00:00] Only three days left to join the Missing Witches Reparations fundraiser. May 31st is the last day to make a donation and enter the draw for fabulous prizes. Go to missing witches.com/reparations. 

Intro: You aren't being a proper woman, therefore you must be a witch. Be witch. Be a witch. Witch. Be witch. You must be a witch. 

Risa: Um, hi Amy. 

Amy: Hi Risa. Hi Coven. Welcome to another episode of The Missing Witches podcast. 

Risa: Hi, listeners. We're so happy. Well, I don't know. I'll speak for, I'll speak for myself. I'm so happy. I feel like I'm like emerging. My body is recovering. I feel alive. It's spring and we're almost at the end of another reparations fundraiser season for missing witches. 

Which is [00:01:00] like so core to who we are and what we love, and it just feels really, I don't know, alive and important. And like, we're gonna talk all about that in this episode and we're gonna talk about why we started doing it and also who we are. 'cause we feel like we realized, we've been on a lot of other people's podcasts and told our story of how we started missing Witches and wrote those books and began to craft a weird, invented, diverse form of magic together in a anarchic and DIY way that we love. 

And that's become really important to us and to hundreds of people in our cabin. And we're all figuring it out together, but we never really told that story on this podcast. So that's what this episode is gonna be about today. But first, Amy, do you wanna tell us about this year's fundraiser and how it's going? 

Amy: Yeah, of course. Um, I mean, it's tough out there, right? And I was looking at some [00:02:00] statistics. There's this one, um, sort of website where people can go to, you know, raise money for their NGOs and. They saw a 37% dip in charitable donations between this time last year and this time this year. And O obviously that's understandable. 

Like it's really scary out there and money is scary. But the thing about us is, and our coven, is that we are witches. And so we understand that what we put out comes back to us. We understand that we are like one being, and when we. Help each other. We're helping ourselves when we put money into reparations, we're healing ourselves. 

There's a, I've heard a lot of people [00:03:00] talk about their problematic ancestors. And for me, this is a great component to those rituals of, you know, understanding or, or de problematizing our ancestors is to make reparations now in this lifetime, in this world. Um, so again, like when you consider it, we talk about this all the time, like it's not a charitable donation, it's the repayment of a debt. 

It's not a charitable donation. It is a, a ritual sacrifice on the altar of possible worlds, as we say. So for me, that makes it easier to. Sacrifice money from my bank account to a greater good or to a different good, because I know that that's healing me, that that's healing my problematic [00:04:00] ancestors, that that is gonna make me feel better than anything else I could probably do with that money. 

So again, I just wanna say like, we get it, it's tough out there, but we are witches, so what we put out comes back to us. That's kind of what I wanna say about that right now, 

Risa: I have to tell you. Um, so pulling way back and we'll talk about why we started doing this reparations fundraiser and um, yeah, the sort of dancing moment that's at the, the origin of both this like core fundraiser and our own work of reparation. 

Um, we donate our entire community proceeds from the month of May. And trust me, we do not make a lot of money. 

Amy: No, we, we do not. As Ben Derem famously said was the quote, [00:05:00] having scruples is not economically viable. Thank you, Ben Derum. 

Risa: Yeah. Um, we can tell, we'll go back, we'll rewind and we'll, we'll try to tell that story in some sort of straight line, although that's not our peak skillset we really believe in, in spiraling out world. 

Out world at Word. Um, but I wanna tell you this story first. I finished radiation, um, about two weeks ago. And on my second to last day in the waiting room, you do radiation, or at least I did every day for a month and a half. So you see the same people over and over again, and you have these weird relationships that form. 

And on the second to last day, it was me and, uh, what turned out to be a gentleman and his father-in-law and his father-in-law spoke, spoke [00:06:00] little, uh, but seemed to understand everything. He was the one who was being treated. Um, and he would like, make really like emotional piercing eye contact with me sometimes when I said things. 

And his son-in-law spoke a lot. And was really so dear and said so many things that landed with me that I was like, oh, hello, strange spirit guide for the end of my radiation. Anyway. Uh, but one thing he said was that in his practice of Hinduism, in his spiritual framework, what he's taught and what he believes is that what you put on your altar or your acts of worship, your acts of prayer or devotion, that those are for you. 

Those aren't for God. Uh, those aren't for the gods. They don't serve the gods that Gods are happy for you that you have that, that's nice. Um, it's good for your mental health. It's good for your spiritual development. [00:07:00] It's beautiful. I. It's grounding, but if you want to serve the gods or a God or make an offering that brings you something in return that actually enacts the wheel of karma, or of fate or of magic, you have to serve others. 

The gods are not really interested in being adored. That's for you. The gods are interested in what you do for the service of all that lives. And um, I really think about our reparations project that way now, now that he it in that light, you know, um, it's always been important to me that I take this concept of tithing. 

Because I was really helped by someone early on in life. I was in total crisis and she helped me and was like a guide and a mentor to me on the [00:08:00] condition that when I could afford it, I would tithe, I would take a regular portion of my income and dedicate it to making the world better. And she said, I do this from a religious perspective, but I have all respect and love for you. 

And know that you're a good person. You dedicate it to the way you wanna make the world better, doesn't I? I don't judge you and your spiritual practice, but when you can think about tithing. And so I think of our monthly reparations in that sense that there's this core, for me, it's the core wound on the land that I live on. 

And. I felt in my body when I learned how much violence is directed towards women, I felt that I was suddenly a woman. I didn't really identify with that so much until I knew that I could be victimized for something I had no choice in. And then to learn the history of [00:09:00] colonization and study the violence enacted on the land that I'm on by people with my skin color and my cultural heritage, the settlers that I am descended from. 

And then to learn that this epidemic of violence, that every third day a woman is killed in Canada by her partner is exponentially larger, impacted more violently, more frequently. On the bodies of indigenous women. It's, to me, it's the core wound that I wanna dedicate my work to, so that my work spirals out from, from whatever I can do to redress that. 

And then my joy and my fertility and my, my nourishing and my, my growth and prosperity like is, is fed by, by holding that [00:10:00] sacred and tending to it every year on the wheel of the year. So that's how I think about it. I wanted to share that story of my, my special Hindu visitor in radiation. But we think about it also as an origin story for our whole Missing Witches project. 

Do you remember the demonstration we were at? And will you tell that story? 

Amy: Yes. Um, I do remember that, and that might have been even before we even started the Missing Witches project. Is that right? 

Risa: It definitely was. Yeah. 

Amy: Um, well, Risa and I met in Montreal. And in Montreal. The, the violence of colonialism is, is right in your face. 

We see it all the time. Um, the city is kind of surrounded by reservations. Um, I. And I even remember I was born in Ontario, and I remember the news coverage [00:11:00] of the Oka crisis as it was called then, um, where these ancestral indigenous lands were being threatened because I mean, very typically, uh, a, a golf course was, um, in the, in the plans for that space. 

And obviously, you know, these people on their ancestral lands were very upset about that. And the government was like, fuck you. It's a golf course. Rich people need to hit balls on big lawns. And so it became like a, a, a violent, um, clash of confrontation and that history rings through. The city of Montreal, and again, as I say, you, you see it, uh, you see the violence of colonialism if you're a montrealer every single day. 

Um, that's not part of this story, but it is sort of like an important detail, um, [00:12:00] for us. It's not imaginary. It's right there. It's not something that we have to look in books to find or in essays to find. It's, it's right there. Um, the story that Resa is talking about was, it was a demonstration to counter violence against women, and it took place downtown and many people gathered wearing red. 

And the leaders taught us a simple little set of steps, a simple little choreography, which we then all learned together as a group and danced in the streets. It was wintertime, it was freezing. It didn't matter. We were dancing. Um, and again, for us as witches, it was really beautiful to see how joy can be protest, how [00:13:00] dancing can bring us together and sort of change the environment. 

I mean, we talk about this all the time, that Ma Magic has this rippling effect, right? And so you can gather a group of people together to dance and protest violence against women, and that has a rippling effect. You might think to yourself, well, we're just dancing, but I. Dancing is never just dancing. 

It's using our bodies as like a magical tools to enact something in the universe, 

Risa: which we would go on to write about in our second book, new Moon Magic. We have a chapter on dance in that book. That book is about anti-capitalist tools for resistance and re enchantment. We talk about Cecil Fatima and the ritual origin of the Haitian Revolution, the moment of wild, [00:14:00] fierce, brave dance where enslaved people and maroons who had refused. 

To be enslaved who had escaped, danced together. And in a night moment, whether it happened exactly this way or not, the story of the dance became a spiral effect that lit the people of flame and emboldened their resistance. And we talk about this sort of core concept when you're looking at the history of colonialism. 

This question that kind of haunts that chapter is Why is a history of colonialism, a history of dances, outlawed this to say, we went on to write books together. We went on to sort of develop these histories that we had looked into into podcast episodes and stories. But all of that would come after this moment of dancing in protest.[00:15:00] 

Um. We often get asked how we met, how we started to practice magic when we knew we were witches. So here, let's trade some origin stories for those bit. I will tell a story of, um, meeting Amy Toro and falling badly in love because, oh man. Um, if you know, uh, and of Green Gables and the idea of like a bosom friend, or when you like meet someone and you're like, hello, you're here. 

Uh, Tina Faye talks about it the moment Amy Poer walked into the writer's room at Saturday Night Live and Saturday and Amy Poer made, um, some. Joke to the effect of I'm not fucking here to entertain you to a male comic. And it was sharp and hilarious and everyone laughed and it was like there was this fire in the room. 

And Tina Faye describes in her mind being like, my friend is here. My friend [00:16:00] is here. Even though they had just met, that's how I felt meeting Amy. Um, I was, uh, Amy and I, we didn't know this, but we had both been producing weird monthly art spectacles for years, probably a a decade, um, in different venues around Montreal. 

And had never met each other. Uh, we were both arts organizers. We both were in our communities encouraging people like, oh, what if, what if this opera collective like collaborated with this, uh, you know, singer songwriter? And then afterwards these tribal belly dancers came out? Like, would that be like a fun day? 

That's a specific show that I did. Um, so we were sort of like these like, uh, dancing Helixes. We did not know each other and had been doing really different but really similar work. We even lived close to each other. 

Amy: I was gonna say, I think we [00:17:00] discovered like kind of recently that we lived like a block away from each other at a certain point. 

Yeah. 

Risa: Yeah, that's right. We went to see Jinx Monsoon and we spent the day walking around Montreal and telling each other Montreal stories and realized we, we. Our local bars were, you know, either the same or right next to each other. Our, you know, our apartments were one block away. Um, we'd always been producing these shows, and at that time, Amy was, had been playing music, and she can tell more about this if I fuck up this story, but, uh, but she, she arrived in this space, in this show, invited by our mutual friend, Kris de Muir, who performs under an alter ego later hose and Il, uh, with a ukulele and keyboards and melodics. 

And later Jose and Krista was another wild arts organizer and had [00:18:00] invited people who were primarily playing with the ukulele to do a ukulele, bizarro, she called it. And so I. It was a weird fucking show in the best possible way. And I was doing these really tiny, creepy songs with family histories, stories about ghosts. 

I was quite scared. I'd only been performing myself music for a little while. And I went to the green room, secretly shaking, and Amy was there with her hair and her like, fucking goddess energy. 

And I was like, can I hang out with you here? And you were like, uh, do you mind if I smoke? You were rolling a joint at the time. I was like, do you mind if I participate? And so, I mean, I, let's be honest, that's true. You know, we're in like a, a grubby music venue. [00:19:00] And, uh, the spirit of the cannabis plant was with us. 

And it sort of opened a space. I don't know, do you get nervous? Were you nervous backstage? 

Amy: No. I used to get really, really, um, nervous. Like I would, I would vomit before shows. Really? Oh, yes. And then at a certain point I stopped vomiting before stop. What? Before shows. But, um, I, uh, I'm the kind of person that I'm nervous before a thing, whatever the thing is. 

And then during the thing, I'm good. As soon as that light comes on, I'm ready. I'm doing the thing. So, um, that day I don't think I was, I was nervous at all because, you know, I was like, I. I was like playing like Cher covers on the ukulele. It's impossible to take something like that so [00:20:00] seriously that you, that you become, become nervous. 

I mean, to me it was like a part music, part comedy. And so I was, I was very, very, very relaxed that night for sure. Mm. 

Risa: That's probably part of why I was like, drawn to you and just settled into your little bowl of calm and then everything felt like it was gonna be okay. 

Amy: Yeah. 'cause it be that fucking serious, you know, like it's most things, it's 

Risa: fine. 

Yeah. Then we were friends forever. Uh, then we, yeah. One of the first times I hung out with Amy after that I. I saw you after a show. I went to see Amy perform with Hmong girls, which is a totally different experience. That's Amy in front of like electric guitars and drums, and a wall of monitors and a wall of sound. 

And Amy is like a priestess over the [00:21:00] sound. Um, and I chatted with you afterwards and you were actually cool and nice. And then we hung out and you told me that everyone should record a solo album. That everyone has a album. Everyone 

Amy: who writes music for sure. 

Risa: No. Everyone, 

Amy: everyone. But if you're writing songs, you have to record them. 

Period. 

Risa: Period. So, Amy, Amy recorded and produced these songs and I completely like, um, dissociated after those songs were in the world, they were really representative of leaving. I. A relationship that I had been in for 10 years that was super loving and creative and fertile, and also had turned me like 90% numb and I had to be cracked out of it. 

And those songs really tell that story. Um, and then, and I left that relationship and walked to Amy's house and couldn't talk [00:22:00] about it. And instead, we sang Beyonce songs until my voice finally cracked up out of my body, which is a story I tell in our first book, missing Witches, reclaiming True Histories of Feminist Magic. 

Amy: Ding 

Risa: ding. 

Amy: But I think the thing for me, and I know that this is the thing for you too, because you mentioned, um, I was like, let's record your music. Let's do it. You know, I, I have the technology, let's do it. But when. I met Risa, I had spent a lot of my life being surrounded by people who saw me as competition, even if they were my quote unquote friend. 

I was competition and what, for whatever. And not necessarily like in the arts, but just like general, you know, oh, you're happy, I'm happier, or whatever it is. And when I met Risa, you know, I was like, let's [00:23:00] record your music. And Risa was like, I wanna put you on the stage. You were, you were working for a company at the time and you would do these events and you weren't like. 

Well, you know, I'm gonna play this show and I, I, I don't want, you know, Amy playing a show because she's louder than me or whatever it was. You know, you were like, I wanna put you on the stage. I'm gonna give you this gig. I'm gonna get you paid to do this. I'm gonna, we're gonna do this, we're gonna do this. 

And I was like, yeah, and we're going to do this, and we're going to do this. And it was just like what friendship is supposed to be, where we're not in competition. Like we really think of ourselves as a team. And so if, if we're elevating one, then we're elevating ourselves. Much like when we talk about doing reparations, when we're elevating the other, we are elevating ourselves. 

And that was part of the like grand love affair was just like. Being in a space with someone who, again, didn't want to compete with me, who [00:24:00] wanted to collaborate with me. And that was so, such a relief and so joyful to be in that space where, you know, we, we could just like, sit on my couch and play music, or we could come up with these grand ideas and then, and then do them. 

You know, like for us, grand ideas are step one, some people have a grand idea and they're like, great, we had a grand idea. Now let's go back to playing video games or whatever. But for us, like the, the doing was a joy. And so again, I think that that's. That was like the real, like super glue was looking at each other and seeing someone that we wanted to make something with, not somebody that we wanted to be better than or do better than, or whatever, than I was like, how can I help facilitate this project that you wanna do? 

And [00:25:00] Risa was like, how can I help facilitate this project that you wanna do? And so, you know, whatever, 15, 20 years later, that's still exactly what we're doing. And I remember we did an interview once together. And someone had asked us something, and it only occurred to us in that moment that it might be because we met in a green room, that we met in a creative space, that it was like all the doors were open. 

We, I know this is a creative person. I know this is a creative person. Great, let's be creative together. And because a green room is like an inherently exciting and thrilling and creative space that sort of, that's the cauldron that we came out of. That was, that was a potion that was already brewing when we entered the room together. 

Right? 

Risa: Yes. I think that's so powerful. It's part of why we [00:26:00] talk about, um, the radical power of. Uh, declare that you're, you're starting a band. Declare that you get together to sing with people. Declare you have a cooking club. Let it shift. Now you have a stitching bitch. Now you, you know, declare regular hangs where you meet people in a space where in that space you create. 

And then to have a friend where the energy bounces back and forth. Where, when they are at that incredibly vulnerable place of joy and of an offering of a weird, brand new idea, like this flicker of a brand new, or they're showing you something profound about themself that it, you might feel that triggering of like. 

The shame, the over culture of shame that is like, this doesn't exist yet and so it [00:27:00] shouldn't, it's weird and it stands out and people might look at us, people might see me like you might feel that rush of that over culture that tries to send those moments back into something small and send us back into our productive camps, hamster wheels. 

But instead you like have faith in yourself and in that person and you're excited enough about what they do to just sort of applaud and be like, how can I help? Can I, can I harmonize poorly in the background because I love this song? You wrote so much, which Amy let me do. Sometimes Amy's written some songs that I love so much. 

And singing with Amy is a real challenge for me because her voice is so developed and strong and big and, um, I, mine just isn't. And it's so, so small and it sometimes I feel quite [00:28:00] choking. Like, uh, I ha I, I sometimes can let it out big, but most of the time my spirit goes into my hands and I wanna write, and it doesn't come out of my voice in that way. 

But to be allowed to sing with Amy and for her to school me on harmonies and then for her to invite me on stage with her to sing songs like Weather Balloon, um, was really like transformative. And I'll also, before we talk about like truly when we started to practice magic, the last kernel for me that I wanna share of seeing my friend as a magical being and beginning to feel like this was a container, this friendship was a container that we could make magic within was the. 

Santa Claus Parade on St. New Bear, 

Amy: not where I thought you were going with this. Yes. 

Risa: So we used to both live near the street and it's, uh, it's all been renovated now. It doesn't look the same, but it, it [00:29:00] was, uh, a time capsule. This street, it had these, these awnings that had been put up in the sixties and were sort of grayish and, and burnt, maroon and rusty. 

And they, they were intended to cover the street from snow, so you could have like a magical shopping experience in Montreal's winters. Um, but this was like very far from downtown and all the little boutiques were just like a multicultural, joyous bramble of weird and functional and delicious and like. 

Drag boots and like $20 wedding dresses. 

Amy: Yeah, yeah. The prom dresses that you could only dream of having an occasion to wear. 

Risa: Yeah. Yeah. They had been there since the eighties and they were, they were still living their best lives. And that street would have a Santa Claus parade. So this is not the downtown parade. 

Uh, this is like a couple of thousand people [00:30:00] with their kids walked over from really residential neighborhoods. The parade itself was very short, very bizarre. Um, very, very 

Amy: low budget. 

Risa: Very low budget, very unbranded. These are just little small shops on the street that, that did floats. Uh, local kids, brass bands with kids wandering off into the crowd or whatever. 

And Amy and I would go every year, we fucking love this parade. We would meet at Amy's house, we would walk over there and. At the end, the float would come with a Santa and Amy, if you can't see her, for whatever reason, is like tall, often in black, you know, shaved hair. She's a fucking punk goddess. And Amy loves Santa Claus, like nobody I know. 

She just has this, she had this like sort of ironic, but also completely innocent and sincere belief that if she cheered [00:31:00] loud enough and Santa waved at her, she would have, is this correct that you would have like a great year, like your year would be blessed by the spirit of Father Christmas? 

Amy: Yes. If you can make eye contact with Santa Claus. 

That's some of the, the best good luck charm that you can possibly get for the year. And I 

Risa: wanna be around people who are unafraid to scream and cheer and laugh, cry, and get Santa to wave at them as 30-year-old women. Like I, I don't, I I, and I want that to be contagious. I want Amy to do it, and then I'll do it with her. 

And then Angela does it, and then Dara does it. And then the group of women are doing it and we're just laughing and enjoying, and the kids are seeing us do it and their parents are wondering if we're on something, but then they're on board and we're just like euphoric, you know? Um, and truly for me it was like, okay, we can do some shit. 

Like [00:32:00] we have, we have Santa Magic. 

Amy: Yeah. Because, you know, so many people get shamed out of their joy. I. Right. Um, you know, your hobby is nerdy. Your body isn't ideal for modeling. Therefore, you should not be allowed to like dance and exist in the world. All these different ways that the world will shame us out of our joy. 

And again, it comes back to that thing of like, it just ain't that fucking serious. Like, I want to have as joyful of a life as possible. And if that means like jumping up and down and waving my arms and screaming sad Santa over here, Santa Santa, that's what I'm gonna do. And I'm not gonna be embarrassed. 

And I don't care if people look at us funny because we are funny. Like, go ahead and look at us. Funny we're, we are [00:33:00] funny. Um, but a lot of people just like, uh, and it's. It's a tragedy to me that, that people are shamed out of doing things that make them happy. That's like one of the, one of the great tragedies of the world is that people feel like they need to shrink. 

Or the Homer Simpson going back into the, into the shrub, like, no, I wanna know you. I wanna see you. I want to know what fills you with joy. I wanna know what fills everybody with joy. 

Risa: And at some point we started to call that witchcraft. 

Amy: Yeah. You know, it's so funny Grsa because. I don't know if either of us remember the exact moment or conversation where we decided to practice witchcraft together. 

Do you like it was like we were not at all. 

Risa: It's so weird. We weren't 

Amy: [00:34:00] doing full moon circles and then we were, and I don't remember what happened between those two times. I don't 

Risa: remember. And it's, it, it is so interesting. I remember, I can't remember where I read this, but I remember reading at some point that the default mode network, the, the ego mind, the conscious, the conscious aspects of the brain when they're faced with things that are like outside of the anticipated pattern, let's say, or magic or whatever makes sense for you in that aspect. 

Um, that it, the brain doesn't wanna remember those things. The default mode network is like, doesn't know where to put it. And so. It's not stored in memory in the same way because it doesn't fit into the pattern that you know. Oh, interesting. And so we're more likely to forget moments that don't jive with what we expect. 

We're more likely to [00:35:00] forget moments of like profound magic, which is part of why keeping a magical journal, or call it a gir if you like, or a diary, is so important. So you can look back at your own, the way you've changed your world, the way you've changed your life. But we didn't write that moment down. 

At some point. You made a maple. We were not, no. 

Amy: Maypole is like very generous, if I recall. It was like a broom handle. Yeah. Duct tape to a bucket. Yeah. 

Risa: Yeah, yeah. We danced around it. It was great. Um, at some point we. 

We had, we had been crafting ritual. We had been sort of inventing it. We had been saying, 'cause the, I can hear you at that time in my life, saying, ah, the goddess forgives. Like we would look at like a spell or something we would find online. And right away we knew intuitively like, it's [00:36:00] okay for us to just write these things. 

It's okay for us to adapt these things. This is magic. Isn't following a recipe. We knew, we knew that for sure. Um, and grabbing glitter from around the house and looking at our herbs and talking about what they made us feel in our associations, if we were gonna start to put them into a tea or something. 

And those moments, what was most powerful in them, and we do write about this as well, in missing witches, reclaiming true histories of feminist magic. Um, was, uh, hearing each other and then a, a broadening circle of people. Say their true thing out loud, like, talk to each other and to the universe honestly, about like what they truly wanted or what they were the most afraid of, 

Amy: or, yeah. 

It's, it's that same shame piece, right? Yeah. [00:37:00] Where not just what makes you joyful, but what makes you sad. And again, you know, we all have this like societal capitalist brainwashing of like, I'm fine, I am great, I am wonderful. And part of it comes from that competition thing, right? Like, you don't wanna show your weakness, you can't show your weakness. 

People won't like you if they, but, but we made these circles where the idea was like, let's be vulnerable and see what happens, right? 

Risa: Yeah. And then I. I had a friend, uh, who appeared in my life for a very brief period and was a totally brilliant, magical person who had turned out, we'd gone to summer camp together like 20 years before, um, appeared in my life, was working at the Salvation Army in the book section, um, was actually an archivist and, uh, yeah, doing a [00:38:00] PhD in library science. 

And she and I had, I had shared with her that we were doing these rituals and that Amy and I were thinking about witchcraft as a space of play, as a space of art, as a space of activism, a space that opened up rooms and dyna rooms within ourselves and dynamics between us and other largely women, but also queer people. 

And then in a resounding circle of men as well. A space to, to, to like do something totally exciting. And she was like, huh, I think I have something for you. Because it turned out that at the Salvation Army, they burn the witch books, certain books are pulled off the shelves and destroyed. Um, and she smuggled them out. 

She said there was a pile and they had been pulled off the shelves, and she brought them to us and said, maybe these are interest to you. And one of them was a book of solitary [00:39:00] magic. 

Amy: Yeah. Uh, I mean, I, I remember that being like a yes. You know what I mean? Right. Like we were talking about this thing. We were playing with the idea, we were squishing it around like, like Play-Doh. 

We weren't exactly sure. And then, you know, the universe slash your friend at the Salvation Army, um, was like, here's some tools, here's some tools to do this thing that you're talking about doing. And I was like, this is a yes from the universe. This is, um, um, 

what's the word I'm looking for? Risa, maybe, you know, the 

Risa: word that I'm looking for. It's a yes for me dog. 

Amy: No, but I, I, I can't think of the word that I'm trying to think of, but it was an encouragement. Hmm. It was like, we're thinking about doing this thing and the universe is [00:40:00] encouraging us through this happenstance. 

Risa: Yeah, I felt that too. And then shortly after that, a woman who had been influential to both of us in the Montreal Music Circle, not close enough to fully claim as a friend, although we both certainly like, loved and admired her, and had like, had great times, um, died suddenly. 

And it was, for me, a moment where I really felt the lack of a spiritual space to mourn. Like I, I, I felt that I didn't have. A church, a religion. I didn't want the ones I'd grown up in, but I was so sad and I wanted to be sad with other people in a ritual way [00:41:00] that honored her life and that believed that her energy in some form could know how, how I had been touched by her. 

Okay. And, yeah. 

Amy: Yeah. I'll say, um, I'll say her name. AME was, uh, one of those people where the, the light just emanates from them. Just this, like, you would look at her and just like. I'm sorry if you, I'm gesturing like with my hands around my face, like, and she, um, I did a, a short internship at the CBC when I was in school. 

And Anja me was one of my mentors. She was working in the radio program at the time. Um, so just like a beam of light, highly intelligent, just an incredible person. And then she was gone. Poof. She was gone. [00:42:00] And when you have like, maybe rejected the church that you grew up in, um, you don't have the steps. 

What, what do we do? When someone dies. And I think that's what we were looking for. Like what do we do? Alright, we have this book and it says like, black candle, red candle, white candle. And I think we found that, okay, great red candle, black candle, white candle. But it was just like an excuse to sit in a circle and talk and sing and cry. 

Um, the candles are great and they're wonderful, but they really just are like a centerpiece for gathering, you know? 

Risa: Yeah. And you may be at different places with the religion you grew up in or the religion you chose. And we are not here to [00:43:00] tell you what is right about that. Anybody who claims to know I would be suspicious of because unless you I would, 

Amy: I would never tell someone what to believe. 

Risa: Yeah. 

Amy: Like belief, especially belief of all things is so personal and so constructed over a lifetime that I, I don't believe in telling people what to believe. 

Risa: Yeah. Yeah. So, so please don't feel, um, judged or threatened by our, wherever we're at on a given day in our spiraling cycles of relationships with the divine or, or whatever that might be, however we think of it on different days. 

Um, 'cause we really don't know. But, um, but that moment was important for us and I think we began to sort of practice more seriously. And then we started to be like, [00:44:00] what is this thing? Like is it wca? What's, what is like, who are the people? Where do we get the reclaiming tradition from? Where what is this practice is? 

And, and we were interested in, uh, earth centered spiritualities. We were interested in goddess worship, you know, in in, in history, in archeology. We were like, what is this story that we're starting to engage with? And. I woke up from a dream in the middle of the night. At least that's what Amy remembers. I don't remember this. 

I have a 

Amy: predecessor though, before the dream. Okay, go, go, 

Risa: go. 

Amy: Um, I had gotten a book that was about, um, rock and roll in the occult. Do you remember this? 

Risa: Yes. And 

Amy: all of you know, you and Angela, everybody was like, I, I got next. I'm gonna read it next. I was like, yeah, I'll finish it. I'll lend it to you. And I finished it and there were no women in it, like none. 

And I remember being like, don't, don't bother. [00:45:00] You know, don't bother reading this. Like, how can we talk about. Like literally anything but specifically witchcraft without including the stories of any women or people of marginalized genders. Like how can this be? And that, I think was a, a real impetus to like, to the research piece of like, 'cause Risa, you and I, we, we both have post-secondary education, you know, we both have multiple certificates and degrees and all of that stuff. 

And we were discovering all of these women that we had never heard of. You know, never even having, having done women's studies, having, you know, having studied a global history of literature and all of that kind of stuff. And there were so many men and so few women. [00:46:00] So now you can talk about the dream. 

Okay. Unless you want me to, because apparently you don't remember, but go ahead. 

Risa: Okay. All I was gonna say is I had all I, all I had was the name I knew it was called Missing Witches. And uh, I knew it was a podcast and it was audio. Um, and which just, I don't know why it was so confident about that podcast we're relatively new. 

But I, I liked the idea of none, none of the visual production, a video. Um, I knew Amy and I both could speak in a way that could be like, kind of nice to listen to, like, uh, and I wanted to write these stories. So I called Amy and she had actually sent me an email maybe earlier that day or the day before. 

I hadn't opened it yet. 'cause I had really been in the fire of this idea and was like, what if we do this podcast? And just like a six episode season. [00:47:00] And, uh, it'll be sort of like telling these histories, these missing histories of, of, of witches. But real people like, we'll go looking for activists, artists, practitioners from history. 

We'll try to unpack this. We'll, we'll always make sure that it's 50% plus people of the global majority. Why is it all, when, when you do get ones that are about women, it's all white women. How can that possibly be the story when you're talking about spirit, when you're talking about the unknown edges of how things happen, when you're talking about, uh, a religious history that exists outside dominant religion, outside of practices of colonization. 

It has to be a story, a post-colonial story. Um, and Amy was like, yeah, like the mix I just sent you. 

Amy: Yeah, so I'll, I'll jump in here because we laugh about this all the time that Risa, you and I have this tendency to, uh, [00:48:00] come up with the same idea from different perspectives at the same time. And then those two pieces just fit together so perfectly. 

So, um, I had just like, I've been making mix tapes since the eighties, right? But this was something different. It was sort of like a collage of like songs and an audio collage of, of songs and like quotes and, and clips of people speaking. And I made this sort of audio collage and the, the thesis of it, if you will, was that, um, the witch is the ultimate symbol of intersectional feminism that the witch appears in every culture across time and place. 

Um, and again, Risa was pregnant at the time, so like, I. If you sent her an email, it was fine if she didn't get to it, you know, like however many months pregnant, you know, I wasn't sitting like, well, it was like, you know, she's busy like creating life. It's fine. [00:49:00] So you sent me an email and then you called me and uh, yeah, you were like this kind of audio storytelling. 

And I was like, oh, like that mix that I just sent you. And you were like, huh. And I was like, go check your email. Because this is one of those things where we've come together with the same idea in different ways from our different sides, like to, to form something that's. That's one, that's one thing. 

Risa: And similarly, I had the idea of doing these scripted produced meditations that would combine like, um, memoir because the personal is still political and, and, and we're flawed in our research and we're just kind of fucking doing our best. 

And, and they would tell these stories in a certain way. And Amy was like, yeah, and we have to interview real living practitioners, which is activists artists. Like we have to engage with the living practice of this. Um, [00:50:00] and that was the origin of our podcast, which was in 2018 we launched. Um, there are several hundred episodes now. 

Um, and it turned out more people wanted to listen to that and engage with it than we had really anticipated at the time. I think we were mostly making it for ourselves. Um, uh, it was 

Amy: like an art project, which is what you and I had always done. 

Risa: Yeah. Yeah, it was, it was another art project and it still is really, um, over time people, uh, encouraged us to start a community of people who were listeners because we were having really like juicy conversations on Instagram and that didn't feel like the right place to have a home for witches, although it was a great place to meet people. 

Um, and so we started a Patreon and over time that evolved, we kind of took a big investment step of time and resources to [00:51:00] make our own cabin instead. Um, and so you can find all of that now on missing witches.com, and it's still a work in progress and it always will be. But now there are several hundred people in the CO and we get to learn from each other and practice magic together in a way that is explicitly, as you will see. 

Uh, trans inclusive, political inclusive of men, radically feminist in the truest sense. Uh, we love science. We support your good judgment and reject high control systems and systems that are based on pyramid practices or on conspiracy thinking. We really wanna be a space to support your joy and [00:52:00] your free will. 

Uh, we're not wiccans, although there are many wiccans in the coven. When I say we had just mean Amy and I, and that may change in the future. Um, but really core to our belief and central to the coven space is as long as you're not hurting anybody, do what that will. And also the Alan Watts quote. You're under no obligation to be the person you wore five minutes ago. 

So please come with a spirit with us of changing and evolving, putting things down, picking things up. Be real about our failures and our weaknesses and our flaws. And be real when it's time for us to fucking celebrate you. 'cause we will. ' 

Amy: cause we will. I wanna return briefly to the the reparations fundraiser origin story, because that's also something that was like piece by piece by piece by piece by [00:53:00] piece. 

Excuse me. Um, we had been invited to give a lecture for a agnostic conference. Um, the theme that year was the Divine Feminine, and I think they realized they didn't. Have any women in their, in their collective. And so they invited us. Um, they offered to pay us, and Risa and I talked about it and we sort of, um, went back and forth with them. 

We traded our, our honorarium, our our payment in order to be allowed to make our talk open to the public. Um, and we, it's such a wonderful story, but I don't wanna take up too much time, so maybe we'll tell that story another time. But we got to talk about witchcraft on the pulpit of a church [00:54:00] with the light streaming through stained glass. 

And because. It was about the divine feminine. We invited a trans woman up on the deus with us. We invited a non-binary person up on the Deus with us to really sort of interrogate what, um, what femininity means and what divinity means. Both of those things are worth interrogating, I think. And part of the deal that we made with them was that we would be allowed because we were in a church to pass the collection plate. 

And again, there's so much pomp and circumstance in a church. I had this like golden platter, you know, going around and we took up a collection for the native women's shelter of Montreal. Again, that's that divine feminine piece, right? And how we can put back into that. Into that source. Um, so that was wonderful. 

And it was, there was a bishop dancing, there's that connective tissue of [00:55:00] dance too. Um, we, we talked about dance as our kind of theme within a theme. The bishop in his robes was dancing with us, and, and I think we raised a couple hundred dollars, which at the time felt incredible and, and still kind of does. 

And then, um, maybe a year, a year later, I. Possibly two years. Um, we did a panel on cultural appropriation and again, invited indigenous people because we say all the time, you know, that we recognize that which is a new age. Practitioners have too often benefited from an extractive relationship with indigenous people and culture and magic and land especially. 

Anyway, all this to say, um, as part of that panel we. We told our panelists that we would be donating our, our Patreon [00:56:00] profits for the, for the month of May to the native women's shelter of Montreal to honor our guests and honor the source. Um, again, at the time it was like a couple hundred dollars a month that we were making. 

And so we did that and then the next year we were kind of like, okay, so we did that and we'll do it again and we'll continue to do it, but what if we invited the coven to join us? And the first year that we did that again, I think we raised about $2,000 and we were like, oh my God, et cetera, $2,000. And of course that was, you know, five years ago. 

And we've been doing it every year and it's been such like a rich, rich addition to, as Resa said, as you said earlier, like that wheel of the year, as the wheel turns when we get to Beltane, this is what we're doing, you know? So for us that the fire of Beltane is like a [00:57:00] reparations fire. It is a spirit fire. 

Um, so again, we invite you to join us as always in making a reparation. And, um, there are more than 20 prizes that you can win. There's a draw. So if you donate $10 to your local indigenous led support org, that's one entry. If you donate a hundred, that's 10 entries and the prizes are amazing, and you can go to our website and dah, dah. 

But all this to say that, you know, every aspect of the Missing Witches Project umbrella has. Grown, it's been so organic. We, we just come up with ideas and then those ideas grow the same way that we wrote our books. Our books start as essays and then, you know, those essays become chapters. Um, and then those chapters become books. 

And, you know, passing the collection plate in the church became [00:58:00] like a movement that our coven does every year. Um, uh, a us sitting in a circle under the full moon became this like hundreds of people coven. Um, and that it's so, it's so beautiful to me, how, how softly and gently, but fiercely and strongly that the project has grown because we came into it never really knowing what it was, that that just meant, you know, the. 

The door to unknown country was always open, right? 

Risa: Look for the door to the Unknown Country is the title of our first ever episode of the podcast. Very first episode. Yes. That's a cool quote from Pixie 

Amy: Coleman Swift, 

Risa: who's really one of our, part of our major arc, let's say. Yes. Yes. Um, and if you [00:59:00] find the story interesting and compelling and you feel like these are the witches you have been missing, or you feel like some part of yourself that has been in French, we say, when we say that, I've been missing you, we say, and it means that like a piece of myself is missing in you or, or like you, you are missing from me. 

And that's part of what we mean by missing witches. That, that we, we come from a place of longing and if you have that longing too, um, there are a lot of different places you can find these seeds that we've tried to share in the world. Our books, uh, we were lucky enough to find a soulmate publisher in North Atlantic. 

They're distributed by Penguin Random House. North Atlantic keeps books in print forever if they decide to publish them for the most part, from what I [01:00:00] understand. And so you can get our books, uh, at any Barnes and Noble. You can have them ordered to your local indie bookstore. You can find them on bookshop.org if you're in the United States. 

Our Oracle deck is a really weirdly powerful way to interact with the stories we've told, and you can write your own stories into it. We are always inviting you to please write yourself in to the story of this creative project that is insisting upon having a voice and insisting upon our joy. And if you are looking for a community and friends and a coven, please know our space is a cherished and exciting space where we have worked to empower members of our space to be able to teach and learn together. 

So Amy and I are never ever [01:01:00] gurus on a pulpit because we are perpetual baby witches, uh, and are happy to embrace that identity. Um, and so we made a space where we get to learn from each other and it's really juicy and joyful and we'd love to see you there. Thanks for listening. 

Amy: Maybe you're one of the witches we've been missing. 

Risa: And whether you are or not, we wish you everything joyful and honest and good. And as we often say, oh, 

Amy: I just wanted to say like in the spirit of it ain't that fucking serious. Um, we end every meeting and generally every interview podcast by saying And blessed fucking be. 

Risa: And blessed fucking be. And sometimes secretly I am also yelling Blessed fucking bees. 

Bless the bees. Bless the pollinators. You I be joyfully pollinated. Bless y'all. 

Amy: I love you, Risa. 

Risa: I love you bud. 

Intro: Be a witch, be a witch, be a witch. You must 
be a witch.
Amy: Only three days left to join the Missing Witches Reparations fundraiser. May 31st is the last day to make a donation and enter the draw for fabulous prizes. Go to missing witches.com/reparations.
