Witch poet, rescuer of stories, keeper of the Hag School, Danielle Dulsky joins Risa for a an honest conversation recorded while Risa was in the middle of radiation, the day before the Canadian Election. Delving into her latest work, Danielle traces a few of the golden threads through the gleaming tapestry of "The Night House." This collection of fairytales, she explains, serves as an activistic mission to reclaim the narratives marginalized by mainstream culture. Fairytales, often dismissed as mere children's stories, hold transformative power. Danielle’s words are a call to awaken these tales and let them act as catalysts for personal and societal change.
Fairytales as Agents of Change
In exploring the origins of these stories, Danielle highlights how fairytales have subversively flown under the radar, dodging cultural policing and maintaining their potent subtexts. As the conversation meanders through history, mythology, and personal anecdotes, feel the magnetic pull of stories that have traveled through time, morphing and adapting much like the heroines they depict.
Rituals Woven in Words
A pivotal element of Danielle’s work is illustrating how fairytales can function as rituals. Each story she shares is accompanied by a rite, a ceremony inviting readers to dive deeper into their own psyche. The magical interplay of energy pathways between the mythical and the mundane is precisely where Danielle’s voice—resonant with the essence of her father’s rebellious spirit—shines. In discussing archetypes and the paradoxical dance between the tamed and the untamed selves, Danielle invites listeners to embrace their entire spectrum, seeing both as sources of power.
Holding the Tension of Opposites
The dialogue reaches its zenith as Danielle discusses the power of paradox—the ability to hold contradictory truths simultaneously. This concept is crucial for witches like Danielle and Risa, who navigate the tensions between worlds every day. The Night House is not merely a book; it’s a timeless invitation to initiate new stories that challenge oppressive systems and amplify voices previously silenced.
Becoming a Tale Tender
As the episode unfurls, Danielle’s call is clear: become a tale tender, someone who creates and cares for stories that disrupt societal norms and awaken dormant dreams. It's a manifesto for using the potent magic of words to shape new realities. By honouring tales—those ancient, shapeshifting archetypes—we open ourselves to transformative potential.
Joining the Dance of the Wild Unseen
For those ready to step into the Night House, Danielle’s work is a beacon illuminating the power of storytelling in the journey of healing and rebirth. Let it beckon you into the dance of the wild unseen, where each story unlocks a door to realms within us yet unexplored.
Listeners, whether seasoned practitioners or seekers of new paths, will find Danielle's vision an echo of their own silent longings. This episode suggests that, while individual stories weave the fabric of the present, it's the collective narrative potential that can truly initiate change. So, we invite you to sit in this vibrant, magical web, discovering what resonates with the magic that’s within you.
Join the journey, explore The Night House, and navigate the realms where magic, myth, and reality coalesce. Blessed be the tales we tell.
Transcript
Interview with Danielle Dulsky
Welcome everybody. Welcome back to The Missing Witches podcast. Welcome electrical energy of the spring and the river that I'm near. And [00:01:00] of tides changing elections happening, votes accumulating, black cats circling. And of all the stories that are pushing in at the edges asking to be remembered, I'm gonna breathe and remind myself that all of my flaws and nerves and aches are welcome here and all of yours are too.
Thanks for showing up in whatever way your body and mind and magic are here with you today. And thanks so much to my guest. I'm so thrilled. We have read Danielle d Dsky. Inspired Incantatory writing in our circles before [00:02:00] we've, we've whispered to each other from Bones and Honey to shore up our courage and heard stories from members of our circle who studied with Danielle and the Hag School. I'm so excited to get to sit virtually through a portal smiling at each other today to talk about this new beautiful book that's been walking with me as I've been going through the Strange Initiation of Radiation here. The beautiful Night House. What an electric book. Thank you so much for being here.
How are you? And in the spirit of something we remind ourselves of a lot in our coven that we don't have to be who we were five minutes ago. Who are you today?
Danielle: Wow. Well, thanks for having me. Who am I today? I love that I don't have to be the same as I was yesterday. I'm not. The new [00:03:00] Moon dawned yesterday and I did really feel like it was a threshold moment. So today I, I identify as a witch, an author, a cat mother, also a dog, mother mother to my sons also, but they feel well and whole and also a little bit distant today.
So, yeah, I'll leave it at that witch writer mother.
Risa: I feel that. I feel all that witch writer, mother Magic. Can you talk about writing this book? How was this one the same or different from the other ones? Why did this one feel like it needed to be born now?
Danielle: Yeah, well, so Bones and Honey I wrote very quickly because sort of like when I'm left to my own devices, [00:04:00] that's the way I write, you know, in these kind of short prosy but poetic paragraphs. And then I'm kind of like in and out describing the thing that I find compelling and not going on and on about it.
So that I had gathered all of these paragraphs of prayers for many years. So when it came time to stitch that one together, it just kind of like came out really quickly. And then. This book of fairytales. Originally it was going to be a kind of, kind of like course in miracles, but cooler with fairytales.
Like that was my intention. That was what it was built as in the book proposal. And then there was some conversations with my editor and it was like, let's amplify the fairytales. And then I suddenly was like, well, that's what I've wanted to do this whole time. I just didn't, I know, I know that even with people like us who really love fairytales, there's still a huge part of [00:05:00] our psyches that necessarily takes fairytales less seriously because they were sold to us as only children's stories and we know how many of them have been Disneyfied.
And so. There was like an ache around that because I really want people to take my book seriously. I know. I know how that word that, or that phrase fairytales feels in the body, so, so my mission then was to write a book about fairytales that also amplified how cool they are and how subversive they are, and how they've really been agents of social change for centuries, if not longer.
So, you know, once that I always need a kind of like activist mission with my books or else, 'cause I'm Aquarius and if I don't have that, I feel like what's the point? And I'm just kind of screaming into the void. So once I had that kind of angle and fell in love with it and did a lot of research around it, then the [00:06:00] book kind of poured out of me really quickly and necessarily so, 'cause I had a shorter deadline with this book than any of my other books.
I've usually had nine months and this one I had three while moving house and basically burning my life down and seeing a new lifeboard. So this book was really written in, in my personal fire also, but yeah.
Risa: Wild. Oh my gosh. What a tight timeframe 'cause there is, there's a lot of research in this one. Like I can see how being able to channel prayers and impressions and responses to the world could come more quickly. Can you talk about some of the things. You discovered in your research that you were like, fuck, yes, I knew it.
Do you know what I mean?
Danielle: Yeah, well I think I had, I might come up with more as I talk, but at least two Fuck yes. Moments. And the first one was re Well, I had known that these stories were [00:07:00] primarily transmitted by women, collected by men. I knew that these stories, the, so the orally transmitted fairytales, not the literary fairytales where we know who the author is, but the orally transmitted fairytales.
I knew that we don't really know where they come from, but what I discovered that was a fuck yes is that there is this strong youngian idea that they originated in someone's dream. And so, you know, we, someone woke up one day like we do and they turned to the person who's there like, oh my God, you're not gonna believe what I dreamt about.
And then the way we still describe a dream to whoever is willing to listen to us, when we describe our dream, we tell it like a story. So, you know, we say like, so I was walking down this road and there's this real once upon a time to the dream story. So I love the idea that these weird fairytales just started as somebody's dream.
And then we're just kind of whispered down the lane for centuries, if not [00:08:00] thousands of years. And now we have this current incarnation of the story and it may continue to change as we continue to tell it. So that was a big fuck yes moment. For me 'cause I'm huge dream nerd. So the the emergence of the dreams and the fairytales, that was very cool.
And then. The other Fuck Yes moment was this current of the, the who I call the Warrior Bird Woman. So there's a story in the Night house that's originally called Fitches Bird, which is essentially a version of Blue Beard, but just so much cooler than the versions of Blue Beard that I think that we are used to.
And so I was familiar with that story, but what I was not familiar with that came out in the research primarily from the work of Marina Warner. She writes a lot of scholarly fairytale books and she was talking about how like the, the bird image and, and Mother Goose who we're familiar with, and, you know, [00:09:00] it was, it was a derogatory.
Way of looking at gossiping women. And these stories were pri primarily told in like the weaving houses in the birthing room. So these were like low class women who were telling these stories. And so they would be looked at as, as these gossiping bird women that were just like, you know, clapping their beaks when they were talking, but they were telling this story and how some of these stories that have these shape-shifting bird women in them, that it was sort of a way of striking at that idea that they were being dismissed as these, you know, gossipy kind of low class women.
So, and, and not just striking at it, but like taking the power back of that bird woman image. So. And there's some, there's like some sexual currents to it too, which is really cool. Like the, the idea of the stork coming to drop off the baby, that that is actually the stork being the bird is kind of the sexual act, which I didn't know.
So [00:10:00] yeah, so that really led me down a few rabbit holes, but that was another fuck Yeah. Was like this idea of the subversive bird woman that shows up in these fairytales and how these stories have kind of flown under the radar and weren't hunted or. Outlawed, although they were in some instances, but not broadly outlawed like we would think magical practices would be 'cause they were able to just be fairytales.
So when that term fairytale started being used just in recent centuries, that maybe, and we don't know, but maybe that was on purpose to make it look like these stories were just children's stories so that they wouldn't be hunted and outlawed. So yeah, so I love things like that. I love, I love the histories where like the spells and the recipes were wrapped inside a folk song and it was just kind of just missed as a song and also fairytales.
So yeah, lots of fuck yeah. Moments around that.[00:11:00]
Risa: Yeah, completely. It's taken me a really long time to read this book and I'm usually like an eater of books, but because it is, there's like, there's work, there's a lot of homework,
Danielle: Yeah.
Risa: which I appreciate it. It really is like I feel, I feel really accompanied where, where I'm at right now in doing it through this book.
I wondered if you could talk about how you were able to sort of find ritual in story places.
Danielle: Yeah, yeah. First I'll say, yeah, the book is dense because again, originally it was this core, you know, you, we were meant to sort of complete it step by step. And then I if I was amplifying the stories, I had to, out of necessity get away from that a little bit because the stories do have this energetic current to them.
And so, you know, if you're familiar with energy medicine, there's an old idea that the medicine always goes to the wound no matter what. [00:12:00] And so when you're sitting in a circle with people in real life or virtually, and you're sharing a story and then you share a reflection at the end, you can. Instantly see that everyone saw something different.
Everyone is sort of landing in a different place inside the story. There's often very intense and heated conversations, 'cause some of these stories cause visceral reactions in people. But you can always see at that point that the medicine did go where it needed to go, and it's different for everyone. So.
So, so it was, you know, digging out certain rights, rituals and spells and, and small personal ceremonies where not every single one of them is gonna fit everybody and the landscape of everybody's life is different. So it was trying to figure out three different rights for every story there. And there's, there were meant to be 13, but really there's 14 stories.
'cause I kind of tucked two [00:13:00] inside one chapter. There's 14 stories and each of them have these three different rights attached to them. And so as I'm writing, I'm knowing and very conscious of not every single person that reads this book is going to do every single thing that I'm inviting them to do.
And. Then also because of that, there's like some of the stories that are in here, say the German version of Cinderella. The Asheville that's in in the night house, and I love that version of Cinderella. There's a whole manifestation spell that is inside that story that I didn't put there. It was, I was already there.
And a lot of the stories are like that. A lot of the stories already have this spell and even like a spoken charm that were tucked inside the story. And so another fuck yeah. Moment that I have had though not really while I was writing the book, it came a little bit before. But still was this, this [00:14:00] understanding that yeah, these stories have been translated.
So, so the charm that's in Cinderella, shiver and shake little tree, silver and gold rain down upon me that was translated from the German, but it's still so cool and that it has been transmitted at least for centuries, so at least for hundreds of years, if not longer. 'cause again, we don't really know how old these stories are or where they come from.
And so the accumulated wisdom and the accumulated power that is now wrapped inside that charm because it's been spoken over the centuries and so many generations. So some of the stories. Already had the magic wrapped inside them and I just was amplifying it in the night house. And then there were other stories where it was just kind of looking at the guiding theme and what it, the different life areas that it might illuminate for whoever was receiving the story.
And then, you know, what can be done to mark different thresholds or rites of passage. And then also for purposes [00:15:00] of divination which I think is maybe the, the easiest and most accessible point for people is just to simply look at, if you're looking for a place to start and you're not going to bury the branch and burn all the things and do the things that I was inviting you to do is totally fine.
All you need to do is when you hear an old story for the first time, or maybe it's one you've heard before, but you're hearing it now as if for the first time. Then you just kind of listen to that story, and then at the end of the story, you name what feels to you like the missing piece or like the frustrating part of the plot line or like the, the thing that the character did that upset you so much.
You name that thing as in the form of a question, like why did her father do that to her or whatever. And then. You ask yourself, well, what's underneath that? And why did I ask that? Like, how is that the very question of my life? I could have asked anything, but I asked that. And that is something that, [00:16:00] especially in a circle of people where you know, there's 20 people that are sharing these questions.
They are always all different. And so that really reveals a lot when you're hearing like, and you're like, yeah, I kind of wondered that, but not really. That's not, but what about this? And it's always like, that's your thing. That's the very question of your life. So in that way, the stories, if nothing else, they're oracular and they sort of point you toward like what the next step is on your journey.
Like maybe that's the next thing that needs to be healed. Maybe that's the next thing that you're meant to teach. But it always shows you like what that next step is. Just looking at that one question that you have that's apparently just about the story. It's never just about the story. So yeah. even remember what your original question was.
Risa: It doesn't matter. No, I found that so exciting. I was gonna ask you about that exact bit, so I'm so happy you brought that [00:17:00] up because I do find that that was such an interesting piece for me to add to my own way of working was like, why, why am I troubled by that one thing? Why are fairytales in particular like that for me, where I hear a story and I'm annoyed by something or like I'm troubled by something.
Do you know like there's something that feels like this makes no sense? Or like, what is this story for? Where does this come from? You know, why did she listen to the fucking wolf in the first place? Or It's, but I found that really juicy I really loved that idea from you. Thank you so much.
Can I read you a bit of your own book?
Danielle: Yes, please.
Risa: Great. Where was this piece? I wanted, I wanna talk about archetype. And I think bookmark it here. Mm. Okay. I wanna talk about archetype, but I also wanna talk about this idea that you offer us in the Swan Maiden. [00:18:00] So you've invited us to sort of hold a personal paradox across our bodies, one, one on each side, and then to sort of rock with it. And then to begin sort of shape shifting back and forth between the two.
As the rhythm quickens. You might begin to sense that a third energy is present, a third road opening between this and that. An energetic invitation to hold the tension of both rules at once. Take care with yourself as this work can be intense, but begin to sense the both as the power source you are not this, and then that you are both at once.
You are all. I wanna talk about the third road. This is something we talk about so much in our coven, the possibility of both and that witchcraft kind of invites us to move between two to not get stuck in binaries. And I was so excited to hear it described as a power source. Can you say more?
Danielle: yeah. That the, the raising of the paradox, which is [00:19:00] what I call, that is something I've done in my work for. I don't know, at least 15 years and didn't share it with other people for a long time because it was something that I kind of arrived at and nobody really taught me how to do it. I just kind of arrived at this through certain embodied practices and working with energy medicine and energy healing.
And then when I started sharing it with other people, ha you know, seeing the kind of weepy visceral reactions that people would have because, and the way they would describe it is, you know, we're, we're so socialized to think that we must be in a pure form all the time. And so, you know, the idea that like, well, I'm only this or I'm only that, and then we know that that's not true.
We know that we are this, this convergence of all of these different energies and roles and parts and characters and archetypal energies also. [00:20:00] So there's sort of often a sense of being defeated or, or like that's like a source of weakness that, you know, we're just this kind of energetic mess. But being able to frame that as actually a power source, you know, it's not really doing anything different because it's just sort of naming like you already know these roles converge in you, but now let's look at that as actually the power source.
That is, if you raise the paradox in that way where you are consciously shifting between this state of being only this and then only that, and then you go quicker and quicker and quicker. So. If you are, if we're talking about Swan Maiden, then the paradox is sort of the tame civilized self, which is likely very palatable to the, well, maybe not very, but it's at least more palatable to the over culture.
It's the part of you that you show the world, it's, you know, what you list on your taxes, your career or whatever, and, [00:21:00] and then that's fine and we need to be that. But then there's this wilder uncivilized, more creaturely self. That's probably less palatable to the over culture, and not just to the over culture, but maybe even to your people and in some cases also to you sometimes.
And so being able to be like, okay, I'm only the civilized self. How do they spend their days? Where do they find meaning? And then. Only the wild self. How does this creature find meaning in life? What would it be like to be only that? And generally there's a feeling of like, well, I don't want to be only this or only that ever.
And so you're just shifting between the two energetically, and you try to raise the paradox by going quicker and quicker and quicker until this third thing that generally transcends language. Usually people struggle to describe what this. Third road or third way is, but it is the all, like I say in the book, it is the, the convergence of this and that until this [00:22:00] third thing emerges and then that becomes the power source.
So in a spell container, you can then use that as the power source to infuse the intention. You can also use it for divination where you sort of feel like you're looking through that portal that opens up that is that third road or third way. So those are the two different ways that, that I use it. But yeah, almost always when you ask people to name two roles that they play in life, that they know they're both.
It feels like they can't be both at once. That if they are going to be the wolf woman on the mountain, they can't be the banker. Right? And, and then vice versa. But when you raise the paradox, you realize, well, I am the wolf woman banker. And that actually that is a power source and not something that should be a source of defeat.
So, yeah. But the stories really illuminate that. The old stories really illuminate that idea, especially the shape-shifting woman's [00:23:00] stories, because they almost always have this kind of land self that is more civilized, where they are maybe the wife or the mother for a time, but they never remain that.
And so often these stories have endings that seem sad because they're kind of love stories that don't have the happy ending. But really at the end, she's returning to her bird form in the Swan Maiden or her seal form in the silky stories or her fox form. If it's the Fox woman story. There's all of these different sort of shape-shifting woman stories where the initiation, the, the cave isn't the sky or the water.
It's the house and you know, being, being housewife and doing the mundane task, that, that's sort of the underworld cave and then the emergence comes when she returns to the animal form. So I know that that's relatable for a lot of people.
Risa: Yeah, completely. Can you talk about being a [00:24:00] witch in,
uh fascist times.
Danielle: Yeah. We're all doing the best we can. I think at least as, as, as I am witch and getting older. So, you know, I'm really thinking about, I was born in 1980 and seeing the way the world has changed you two. Oh, wow. So, yeah. So we've seen a lot and, and if we didn't see it ourselves, we heard about it from our grandparents and our parents.
And so thinking about the parallel between the, our own personal myths and, you know, the stories that we really identify with, that we personally have lived and are initiations that feel like part of the smaller story, but really the way that has mirrored and reflected the world story and the global underworld journey, I think most people can name, for instance, in 2020 and 2021, a big personal [00:25:00] initiation that was going on that kind of seemed a little bit independent of the gnarly world story that was going on.
So I think a, a part of me as which, yes, there's, there's activist and, and there's, there's rage and, and righteous rage and, and all of that. And then there's also being able to kind of step back a little bit and not anymore for me be so. In awe that I get to be here for this. I still have that, but in 2020 I used to cry all the time.
Like, I can't believe I get to be here for, for this. This is obviously a wild moment, but now there's this, which is still a wild moment, but in a different way. And I, I do feel in a weird way, lucky to, to be here for it. Like, I don't really know how the story ends. I don't know that I'm gonna get to see how the story ends.
But I, I feel privileged that I can step back and kind of behold the narrative, [00:26:00] which yeah, my witchcraft helps me do that, but so does my storytelling like that this narrative intelligence, which is sort of being able to step back and behold the larger arc and plot line in the story is, is helpful because then you're like, well, what character am I in this weird story?
So. Yeah. I don't know if that answers your question. That's what I have today.
Risa: How do you think our personal stories work with the energy of the, of the overstory of the larger story? I think you're so right when you point out that everybody went through a transformation that felt really personal and somehow separate from the, the, the crisis. Why, why does that happen? How does it, how does it work together?
What do you think?
Danielle: yeah. I mean, in the end, I don't know, but I do think that
Risa: I mean, how could you, but I love to hear what you think.
Danielle: yeah, what I think, I mean, yeah, that's fine. I, I, [00:27:00] I love to tell people what I think all the time
Risa: Same! I love having opinions and I want you to just have a big caveat around all of my opinions.
Danielle: I think, you know, the, the, the simple answers that we're, we are co-created, you know, the, the characters that we are and the story that we are living, we are co-created, not just by our, our families and our people, but, and our local communities, but also from this global community at large, which we, if you were born in 1980, you know, we were born in a time where we weren't really connected to the global community, not in the same way, and, you know, went through all of school before the birth of the internet.
So having this, this, this kind of weird you know, connectivity all over the world and yet complete lack of intimacy in some instances, you know, via social media, doesn't necessarily feel that intimate to me. So. You know, I think the reason why sometimes our smaller stories mirror the larger story is just [00:28:00] because of the way we are communicating and we're able to, to kind of see our role in this story that's so much bigger than us that started before we were born that, you know, won't be over until long after we're dead and this incarnation anyway.
So yeah. So why does it happen? I don't really know, but I know that it happens.
Risa: It really does. Okay. Can you talk about archetypes and magic a little bit?
Danielle: Yeah. So ar archetype means high form or original form. So an archetype is essentially the original blueprint of a particular. A particular thing. And so one of my favorite quotes about archetypes Dr. Estee said in a training that I did with her back in 2019, which was, and she kind of like said it as a one-off and like didn't really expand upon it, but I wrote it down and I underlined it.
'cause she said, archetypes don't understand our human needs. And I do think when you are [00:29:00] in need of a medicinal archetype in your life, so for instance, the sovereign archetype, which is so common in the old stories, the king, the queen, the princess, the princesses, I. That you sort of get so attracted to it and there's sometimes an unhealthy over-identification with that archetypal energy.
And you know, it's coming from a good impulse. It's coming from this place like, well, I need this medicine. Let's say you've just gotten out of a relationship where you had no power or control whatsoever. Then there's this craving to be queen and put the crown on. And yet, if you become only queen, if you invite that archetypal energy in and that's sort of the story you are living day in and day out, then you know, you might be stepping into a place where you're not just getting your power back, but you might be exerting that power over other people and getting more into the shadow form of the ruler archetype.
So. Archetypes are kind of these [00:30:00] bubbles of meaning that are very like small gods. And I know that lots of witches argue with me about that, and I know that there are traditions where that wouldn't make sense, but to my mind it's like. A deity would be this deep well of power. So an example that I often give, I work a lot with Queen Maeve in my witchcraft, and my entire mother line is Irish.
So I have ancestors that have paid into this deep well of power that is Queen Mae. Every time I light a candle for her or put some wine on or honey on her altar, which she likes, then I'm putting a deposit into that deep well of power that is Queen Maeve. So that what I call on. Queen Maeve Energy in a manifestation spell or something like that.
I'm kind of making this small, energetic withdrawal, but I can do that 'cause I've paid into it and my ancestors have paid into this. Well of power. Archetypes are the same. Archetypes are this well of power, and [00:31:00] every time somebody tells a story with a king or a queen in it, it's getting amplified in that particular way.
So archetypes can be medicinal or they can be problematic depending on, you know, if we're already swimming in that archetypal energy, which we know that king energy, we've been swimming in that energy for hundreds of years. So. The, but the stories that have Kings, Queens, s and princesses in them. I know that that's often a core complaint about fairytales because it's like we don't care about these royal people that are showing up in the stories, but it's the sovereign archetype.
So if there's a king or a queen in the story, remember these were told by the midwives and the weaver women, they were never told by the kings and the queens, so you know, the things that happened to the kings and the queens in these stories, it isn't usually like they start in power and then they're still in power at the end of the story.
There's some great transformation that the king's, queen's, [00:32:00] princess and princesses are going through, and we look at that then as mirroring what our own inner sovereign is going through. So the inner sovereign is the part of you that sets your rules, that remakes your boundaries and takes down the old ones when they don't make sense anymore.
So. We can always see that the archetypes that are showing up in the old stories, they are meant to teach and transform and maybe be embodied and understood for a time, but never forever because then you'll be dreaming about them. Then, you know, you'll start dressing like them. And, you know, if I was only Queen Maeve, she was, she was a badass, but she was often at war.
There was a weird relationship with her sons, and I have said, so I don't wanna necess, and she died by getting shot in the head with a piece of cheese. I don't want that
Risa: Not ideal. I mean, she is maybe better than other things, but[00:33:00]
Danielle: Right. So archetypes are cool. They're, I know they're compelling. There's a little bit of like a what's the right word? Attention around know, they, they aren't soft. They are these kind of sharp energies that are just the purest form of that thing. So sometimes we need a little bit of that medicine and sometimes it's not particularly great.
Risa: Yeah, that's so interesting way of thinking about the sovereign. I have a little kid and she is like really heavy into princesses. But like they're superheroes to her, you know? Yeah,
mean, it makes sense like princesses and princes in stories, they're the maturing sovereign, so. You know, I think that it's a healthy thing to ident identify. I, I know the Disney version of the [00:34:00] Princess might have weirdness around it, but it's a healthy childhood impulse, I think to identify with the prince or the princess archetype.
And especially developmentally like that you're so accurate about that, that like it's a sense of control for her, of her own sovereign self. Yeah.
Danielle: yeah, exactly right. She's figuring out what she can get away with, where the boundaries should go. What, you know, what can I say to this person and not say to that person. That's the inner princess. And we still have the inner princess,
Risa: Yeah. Even just developing an eye, like an I separate from you, separate from your or whatever that, that piece of identity, I wanna know more about, so there's this sort of, i, a question that I always have with people who are powerful. It's the, like in a, I phrase it in a joking way, but you'll know what I mean.
It's the, like, who gave you permission? Do you know what I mean?[00:35:00]
Danielle: Yeah, who gave me permission? I know I think about as a student in one of my yoga classes forever ago, and I forget what it, we were doing some ritual, you know, something that was not of traditional yoga and they were like, are you allowed to do this? To do this?
I grew up in this weird household where, and I know that we all did, but my particular brand of weird was my mother, especially at certain phases of my childhood, was very born again Christian. She kind of renounced Irish Catholicism that she grew up with and she was this born again Christian and I was enrolled in a Christian school and also went to church twice a week.
And then my father, who they were, they were married and divorced three times. It was a very volatile relationship. They had married [00:36:00] and divorced three times before I turned 16. So it wasn't like over the landscape of my entire life.
Risa: to each other over and over
Danielle: Yes.
Risa: Wow. Okay. Making and on making your world over and over again.
Danielle: Yeah. Yeah. And he was this kind of atheist outlaw, Vietnam vet biker.
And so he was godless and like, was proud of it. And so, you know, and they, they raised me and then half of the time when they, because they also were in, both involved in their individual addictions, so they weren't able to raise children for a lot of my childhood. And so I was at my paternal grandparents' house, which was totally different.
Cookies in the oven loving household, you know, how was school today? You know, I didn't have that my parents' house. And so, so this, this, the father that I had, being really a criminal in a lot of ways. I mean, one of my favorite [00:37:00] stories about him, which is alive because it's an Easter story. Is, it was like, my mom was a night nurse.
She was working Easter Eve, and my dad has a 2:00 AM oh shit moment, because he was supposed to get the Easter baskets and stuff for my sister and I. So he calls his biker friends, or maybe they were already at the house, I don't know. But he gets on the motorcycles and they go into town and they throw a brick through the toy store window and they steal the entire Easter display of like the stuffed bunnies and the candy.
And they're like driving through the town with the stuffed bunnies under their Rs, you know, so, so it was illegal. And yet my sister and I remember that Easter morning just being like the o, the greatest Easter morning ever. So, so I grew up with this parental figure who was really, if I had to like distill one lesson that my father gave me, he died in 2007.
It's like, figure out how much you can get away with [00:38:00] always and do exactly that much. Like don't, don't be too timid and step back like, you know, go to that boundary line. So. Your question about like who gave you permission? My father gave me permission because it was like, you know, he wasn't a witch in any way, but he was very, he was, you know, he lived his life the way he lived his life and he got away with it most of the time.
And I live a very different life from my father. I'm not robbing toy stores in the middle of the night, but I do kind of feel, especially now when there are technically legal things that are going on that I know are not right. You know, the legal or the illegal. Whether it's what I'm allowed to do as a witch or what I'm allowed to do and not get arrested, it's the same for me.
It's like I'm gonna do exactly what I feel is right. And if I remember a teacher in the past that gave me permission to do it, great. And you know, if it's something that I [00:39:00] just feel from my own nosis is the right thing to do, then I'm gonna do that too. I dunno that I would've answered that question the same way yesterday, but that's how I feel today.
Risa: I feel that I do. I, I remember walking with my dad. I would stay with him for like a week in the summers. And I remember walking with him through Kensington Market in Toronto and walking through all the red lights and sort of hesitating, 'cause that's not really how things were in the rest of my life.
And him telling me like, you gotta practice breaking small laws so you don't get used to authoritarianism. I was like, okay. Okay. Good, good. Important note,
Danielle: Yes, exactly.
Risa: go back to the suburbs with that information.
Danielle: trying not to be like so, so good all the time. I mean, that was a huge part of my upbringing. And then like having the [00:40:00] tension between the Christian school where you just had to good girl or you would get punished. And then having my father be like, you know, that's not really true. Yeah.
Risa: Yeah. I really get that. Especially now, I'm, I'm staying in Montreal again, and I take the metro to the hospital to do radiation every day. And I go by my old private Catholic girls school, and the girls get on and off and I see this reflection of myself, you know, no hair, my, my breasts have been cut and removed, like, I'm moving through layers of time and I, I'm just very aware of the fact that we all are, you know, that we're past these versions of ourselves and, and, and that it is invented in a way that like my will matters.
It's not the only thing that matters otherwise. I probably wouldn't have chosen this,
Danielle: Yeah.
Risa: but it does matter. I'm participating in shaping this, you know?
Danielle: right. Yeah, absolutely.
Risa: Yeah. [00:41:00] That does bring me to, can I read a little bit from Right The very end? that okay? Yeah.
Danielle: Nobody ever reads my own books to me. This is very special.
Risa: Oh, I really enjoy reading these out loud because there's a lot of really powerful magic in them, but also the language is very juice. Mm-hmm. All right. So this is really towards the end and it's an invitation and such an exciting one. You write, the rooms you visited in the night house. In these pages are an invitation to become a tail tender.
To initiate means to begin after all. So begin now. Initiate the new story. Tell a tale that troubles the systems in your world that you would like to see fall that wakes the very beast that will swallow the outmoded structures whole. That dismantles the old beliefs and burns their house to the ground that be [00:42:00] witches the kings to lay down their swords and amplifies the sound of the bones song, bring others to the night house.
Now you know the way. Can you unpack more of this invitation for us? How do we leave here and use stories to dismantle what's dangerous and violent in the over culture?
Danielle: I think the simp the, well, I guess I don't wanna use the word simple, but the, the most accessible way to go about it is to, for, for me, if I'm looking for a certain story that's gonna like give me all the answers or whatever, I almost never find it. I have to start from this place of just being open and looking for the story that's coming for me, or usually returning for me.
So usually the stories that I feel [00:43:00] I'm meant to tell and tend are stories that I've heard, that I've known maybe for a very long time. And they've shown up in many different ways. So if I look, I can see that, you know I. Cinderella shows up in the movie a Nora, for example. So you know, these, these old stories, the plot is the same and it just keeps getting reincarnated and certain di different details get amplified, but it still shows up in these accessible places like the Netflix series that we're streaming and also more mystically in sometimes our dreams.
Again, if we sort of look at our dreams like a story, then we can sort of be, be able to become more open for a, a guiding story to find us and. An important point, and this comes from Joseph Campbell's work. He, he emphasizes this in several of his books where like, you almost always kind of feel like you're dancing around it.
Like [00:44:00] you're never gonna feel like you're doing it right. You're never gonna feel like I found the exact right story. This is totally mine. 'cause there's always gonna be something in the plot that doesn't make sense or that you think is too weird, and then you wanna just kind of throw out the whole story.
Don't do that. 'cause sometimes it's just one image in the story that gives you the answer. So you can almost look for that most vivid image so that this is my recommendation. You, you sort of, let's say you feel like sleeping beauty. Is a thing, 'cause you kind of remember it from childhood and maybe you've been seeing roses over and over again and for some reason there's a meme that you saw on Instagram that you ended up saving.
So don't necessarily only look to the magical places, 'cause it can be the relatively mundane places that the story shows up. So let's say it's that and you're like, I think maybe Sleeping Beauty is a thing. Read at least three different versions of it. Or watch if you watch the Disney movie, that would count.
But you try to read at least three different versions so that you can then [00:45:00] see what the bones of the story are. You can then see what doesn't really change. If you can find original, collected versions of the story, then that's good. But they can also just be somebody's blog that, you know, they decided to revision this story and then you kind of let it sit.
So you read different versions of it, you kind of let it sit. You ask yourself, what is the loudest image in this story? So say it's a rose, you go find that in nature. So let's say you find a rock that looks like a rose, you put it on your altar and you just let it brew you let it sit and then you'll know when it's time to speak the story out loud.
Maybe it's like three days, maybe it's like three months or a year. But you'll get to a place if you have the altar for the story, especially, you'll get to a place where it's time to speak the story out loud. And importantly, let it be witnessed if only by your cat and your dog and your ghosts. Ideally there's a living person that's listening to you.
'cause it does change it a [00:46:00] little bit. But you, you allow, you have this sense of, I'm not just telling it alone in the dark. I'm speaking to my ancestors or to future me or to someone. And then when you, and only when you speak the story out loud, do you realize that it is. IAC, because there's gonna be something you say that you didn't expect to say.
There's gonna be a character that you describe in this weird way, and you're like, where the fuck did that come from? It's as if the other world is just speaking right through you, and you don't really get that proof for yourself until you take the leap and try to tell it. It'll be imperfect. You'll forget bits, and you'll have to go back and that's okay.
Still. There'll be these moments where you as the teller realize why you are speaking this story out loud. And once you get to that point, you can't help it. You're gonna tell the story again and again, probably for the rest of your life, but you don't get to that place until you speak the story out loud for the first [00:47:00] time, and you have that witches proof that like, oh, there is something in this story that I didn't get until I let it spill from my tongue.
So, yeah. Bring others to the night house. Now you know the way. That's what I meant by that.
Risa: Does telling it to others. How does it change them, do you think? Or like what is it about stories that, the way that they travel that has some kind of power?
Danielle: Well, I think it has. I don't know, but I think it has something to do with, A story is always co-created by the teller, the people that are listening to it or reading it. Then this other thing that I'm just gonna call the other world, or sometimes I call it the wild unseen, it's the implicate realm that's, you know, less visible to us where all the visible things are from, where all of the visible things are sourced.
[00:48:00] So when there's more people that are listening to it, then we have more of these variables that are coming in to change the story and let it become something new. So that's what I think. I do have a knowing in my experience that like if I am, if I'm gonna tell a story for the first time to a group, then I'm practicing it in, you know, while I'm curling my hair or while I'm just talking to my cat or going for a walk and.
I'm, you know, getting to the point where I'm familiar enough with the plot that I feel comfortable to tell this story, but I still know that when I speak that story in the room with all those people, there's gonna be something new that comes out. And I also have a, knowing that it doesn't always seem to be for me, like that new thing that I amplify, I'm thinking of this moment when I told the hand Endless maiden story, which is a story I've told 10 million times, and.
I was just getting so into describing the devil, and I don't usually like, I usually like write off the devil as this [00:49:00] weird character in the story. And I'm just so into describing the devil. And then at the end, someone came up to me and revealed a story and I'm like, that's why I was doing that. You know, it wasn't just me.
It was, I was doing that unconsciously for them describing the devil in this particular way. So I think it has something to do with that. There's just more energetic hands afoot when there's more people and the story's gonna become what it needs to become, regardless of what I'm intending as the facilitator.
Risa: That's such an exciting way to describe it, and I know that you're right, especially as a, a mom of a kid that has like told, remembered, you know, she's asking me origin stories from mermaids and I'm remembering a story about. Seen, and I'm sort of making it up and things are coming, and suddenly she's like weeping and it's really emotional for her and trying to understand why it's hitting her so much, you know, and just something spun between us that the idea of [00:50:00] like going back to the magical world or, or being or leaving your family behind because they didn't, they didn't trust you behind the closed door, you and your magic or something.
hit her, you know?
Danielle: Right.
Yeah.
Yeah. And like I think in, in modern witchcraft, something that we don't readily have at least not often is proof that our own words are powerful. You know, I think maybe that's especially true for newer witches, but you're reading out of the spell book and you know, maybe it's a charm that is, was written 10 years ago and not one that was written 500 years ago, but you're still repeating it and it feels a little bit rote.
So we don't often encounter in our witchcraft these opportunities to not only allow something else to kind of speak through us, 'cause we know that that's scary. But if you're just telling a story, it's a little bit less scary and it is still happening. And then proof that like, oh, those words really [00:51:00] mattered and they came out of me.
But also not really. We don't have a lot of places in our witchcraft where we allow that to happen, I don't think. And so. Storytelling. And I, and I teach this sometimes, like storytelling can be a backdoor to any number of magical practices. Especially working with a deity. Like if you're feeling called to work with a particular goddess, for example, and you aren't really sure how to do it, and you've got all the old church wounds and you're like not wanting to pray to anybody and all of that.
I've heard all of that and I've lived all of that. And so find a story that's part of their mythology and just begin to kind of map that story and speak the story out loud again, build the altar to the story. And you know, you're just telling the story of this particular goddess, but you're not like there's something else, something much bigger that starts to come through you.
And you know, it can be the beginning of a lifelong relationship and kinship with that particular goddess. So yeah, [00:52:00] stories can open all sorts of magical doors.
Risa: Thank you so much for opening these little doors for us in this conversation into your practice and your way of thinking and your life opening a little bit of the night house. I really invite anybody listening to this to get your hands on this beautiful book and spend time doing this magic decades of life lived in magic that are woven and centuries that are woven through this beautiful book.
Do you wanna tell folks where they should go to find you the most exciting ways to get involved in your work these days?
Danielle: Well, I have two websites. Actually, I have three websites, but you can just go to daniel doky.com, that's the main one, and then that will open these other doors to these other websites if you feel called to go that direction. I teach writing a lot. I teach you know, traditional book proposal writing and how to script that.
And so I have a program that's open for registration right now. [00:53:00] And then I also have virtual covens and longer year long witchcraft apprenticeships. So yeah, I do a lot.
Risa: She does it all folks join the HAG School if you're up for it.
Heather: All right. Thanks everybody. Thanks Danielle. All blessings be. Thank you. Thank you.
Risa: You too. We say blessed and fucking be.
Blessed fucking be.
