18 – moon
magick, mystery, mysticism, intuition, dreams
New Moon Ritual
led by Percival Hornak for spring semester first rehearsal
adapted for spring COVEN-19 Zine
The new moon is a blank page - a time that is ripe for planting seeds that will grow over the course of the month.
Get comfortable in your space - light a candle, grab a blanket, whatever you need to feelgood where you are.
Grab pen and paper and write 2 lists - a list of things you desire, things you want to call in,and a list of things you want to let go of. Take as much time as you need. Whenever you can,think in the present - “I am” versus “I will”.
Declare your desires - actively call them in.Read the list out loud to yourself, lingering on things if that feels right to you, repeating something if you feel compelled to.
Save your lists and revisit them at the next full moon - take stock and celebrate the progress you’ve made.
witchcraft: a working definition
existence in resistance to oppressive systems; honoring inherent value above, below, without, and within; being humble in the presence of the unknown; being powerful from within, out of one's own unknown
mystery
Magick is mysterious -- not to be mistaken with magic, which is utterly real, the stuff of illusion and trickery. It is joyful in its irrational rationality. A woman wasn't really sawed in half -- there's a logical, comforting explanation behind it all, we just have to keep guessing. Theater is full of magic: using slights of hand and tricks of the light to lure spectators into suspending their disbelief. Magic is a tool, a performance, an accomplishment of logical ingenuity.
Whereas magick is surrender to the unknown and unknowable. It’s the stuff that falls outside the realms of logic, or at least isn't easily readable by our inherited colonialist frameworks. It isn't something to be tinkered with and sold. It's much too alive for that. In theater, it's the crackling of truth between two actors, the suspension of breath after a final line, a lighting cue that swallows the audience up into the past. There is humility in playing with magick -- because no matter a witch's tools or talents, she only ever attains the smallest of glimpses into what lies beyond.
connection
“As above, so below; so within, so without." Or, to invoke adriene maree brown: "the whole is a mirror of the parts. fractal – the health of the cell is the health of the species and the planet." (Brown)
Magicks reverberate. Even the most solitary witch, tucked away with her herbs and remedies in the deepest part of the darkest wood, is connected the world around her, via sometimes infinitesimal but always-there threads of energy. It's why turning inward matters so much: if we become a little healthier, a little gentler from within, then we'll hopefully move through the world in healthier, gentler ways -- and bit by fractal bit, healthy, gentle transformation can ripple outward and take root.
Reverberations happen across space, but also time. Magick swims between and among generations of ancestors -- literal and mythic, human and non-human -- and asks us to honor the dead as we become ancestors ourselves. What have we inherited and what do we wish to pass on?
resistance & response-ability
A witch is always on the outskirts, spinning knowledges that the wider human world of patriarchy and colonialism deems illegitimate, even dangerous. Regardless of what she is attempting to directly accomplish with her skrying or divining or potioning, she is doing it in resistance to the power-overs that be. Her very existence is a powerful thing -- but we all know what comes with great power.
To be a witch is serious stuff. It's silly and joyous, to be certain (nonsense and fun are enemies of the patriarchy, so a hearty cackle is a powerful tool indeed). But to do magick -- to intentionally, gently, healthily tug at otherwise invisible connective threads -- comes with the weightiness of response-ability: "cultivating collective knowing and doing" (Haraway 2016, pg 34). Even a solitary witch is in response-ability to her worldly entanglements: humanity, plants, ghosts, the earth, the cosmos, her own wellbeing.
To be in a Coven, to deliberately be in connection with other witches who are deliberately in connection with their entanglements, is an especially serious and silly thing.
COVEN-19 Samhain Full Moon Ritual
from fall 2020 performance
Gather under the moon’s sacred geometry: dance of light awoken by terrifying angels; listen to the candle’s mouth/kindling within you. Devour the flames/feed your resistance.
You are not a machine. You are you. Not what you make, a number of hours or credits. Take ownership of your exhaustion, joy, anger, gentleness, numbness, and… humanity.We will go to the highest place when we take care of eachother, and most importantly, ourselves.
Descendant nostra corpēs in mellem vitae!
Let our bodies descend into the honey of life!
Feed your joy.
Rest.
Feed your rest.
Rest.
Feed your comfort, let it be radical.
Rest.
Feed your resistance.