Witchcraft, Magic & Mayhem - IWM 2021: Words From Across The Pond with US Correspondent Lux Emené

We’re Ranting About International Women’s Month

To be completely honest, ever since we traded conservative fascism for liberal complacency around the police state here in the US, I haven’t paid attention to the news and politics. When Mare told me it was International Women’s Day, I forgot because ever since Kamala got into office, I just assumed that it cemented into the collective consciousness of who run the world: GURLZ. *Queue Beyoncé, pre-Illuminati vibes*

But you should know this in the UK. If you’re as mass media programmed as I am, you know that the Harry Potter series should have been renamed Hermione and the Every-Time-She-Hauled-Dees-Men’s-Asses, because without her mastermind, Harry Potter the trauma-boy wonder and fund-Planned-Parenthood-in-Diagon-Alley Ron of the poor Weasleys wouldn’t have known how to navigate shit.

As an aside, could we please talk about how we managed Hermione, the feminist icon at all , especially given JK Rowling’s ongoing bigotry against transgender folk? Honestly, it’s hard to like wealthy people when so many of them - when cushioned from the collective’s trauma - continue to be out of touch. (Get me some Aquarius-Pisces vibes up in here!)

Still, nature finds its balance, and true feminism is intersectional: There are Hufflepuffs and Ravenclaws in charge at the Harry Potter franchise, and they can program video games. (Did you read about this?)

They saved the day to ensure that even your Wizarding World avatar for an upcoming video game can give you the impression that the world hasn’t always tried to eradicate your queerness, (because now Rainbow Capitalism is profitable). But representation matters, and clearly it can change the world. Case and point, also in the news about media and social activism, it was announced that the FBI killed Malcolm X! This news came out about the same time that Judas and the Black Messiah did, which is a movie about how the CIA killed Fred Hampton of the Black Panthers.

Apparently black excellence is threatening for a country founded in institutionalized slavery. Which makes me wonder if the only reason why Hermione Granger wasn’t killed in the Harry Potter series was because she became a cop.

Same strategy worked for Kamala Harris, Madame Vice President.

(Or maybe Harris is a witch?)

Like Meghan Markle, outcast into the proverbial woods to survive off solely their latest Netflix deal, and hug it out with Oprah, unworthy (according to the press) of the pedophilic, racist monarchy that your country continues to worship. (Not that it’s any of my business as a Yankee to commentate. *sips tea*)

Honestly, people can go through so much shit, especially women. Like, the concept of needing to work to assert space to be able to own your life for yourself is apparently still a foreign idea, which astounds me. Consider how we have to protest just to make sure we don’t die? Like, MEXICO! SWEETIE! IS EVERYTHING OKAY? (We know it’s not, but Vegas rule: I heard she’s in an abusive relationship — with every man.)

As soon as true borders lift, honey, it’s you, me, Baja, the Yucatán peninsula, and radicalism. We’re going to work this out, k, sweetie? *wipes Mexico’s tears while preparing her Molotov cocktail* I’ve been on #carteltok girl; he’s not going to change — you’re too good for him!

A cute sign that I like to see at feminists protests is the one that says “we are the granddaughters of the witches you could not burn”. And that gets me thinking: What is a lot of witchcraft - channelling psychosis through ritual, #selfcare, gossiping with your girlfriends - but an occult social function for protection?

I imagine my ancestors practicing the craft, drinking damiana tea under the moonlight until 3 am, unfurling the madness of their unconscious as a pre-game before they sneak into the woods to ecstatically dance - naked from bodice - around a bonfire, revving up for the orgies (free of hurtful masculinity). Like, it would be so fun to castrate a rapist with your friends. Sure, I’d learn herbalism too if it meant I could help my friends poison their abusive husbands. (Whispers: AQUA TOFANA.)

Consider just the importance of a coven. My own bias: Growing up Filipino-American, I always irked at how my aunties would talk about the most intimate details of my life, including when I got a training bra, or when I got my period. I never understood why they’d always be in each other’s business about whose husband was cheating, or their long International Calling Card/ Magic Jack/ wi-fi talks about drama.

But maturing, I realized that when your partner is showing signs of unconscious programming, like gaslighting narcissism, a coven keeps you safe. Coven is just a shorthand for free therapy, and is largely a social function that enabled women and femmes alike to survive and thrive forever, because men be high on patriarchy.

As the wise the Spice Girls once sang, “If you wannabe my lover/ you got to get with my friends”. Even if the extent of my friendship nowadays is sending the same 10 people TikToks all day long.

A lot of the reason I practiced witchcraft - besides transmuting trauma, and needing to overcome the patriarchal oppression of Catholic guilt midst my sexual awakening - comes from being a by-product of a lot of 90s television programming. I vividly remember watching the 80s version of The Worst Witch with the oddly sexy Tim Curry, Studio Ghibli’s Kiki’s Delivery Service, and Practical Magic with Nicole Kidman. Totally formative, probably - for all I know - why I’m queer today. I rented all of these movies from my neighborhood Blockbuster, the VHS rental store. To any younger generations reading this, Blockbuster was like Netflix, but better because it was the Before-Times pre-pandemic, and you could experience rites of passage like the store clerk flirting with you, not because he was a pedophile, but because as a pre-teen, you were basically an adult, and clearly smarter and cuter than the other girls his age.

Here in the US, we’d sooner establish a witchcraft store in an over-industrialized part of town than a mental healthcare facility. Given that the allopathic model of healthcare doesn’t always encompass the fullness of the ravaged dark-night-traversing soul, I’d sooner project onto a crystal skull about the complicated nature of how I’m in love with my toxic ex than afford therapy anyway.

I’m so looking forward to getting therapy in the US. I have to be on a waitlist for half a year with my local community center, but it’s exciting to anticipate mental stasis.

The alternative to becoming a witch - as inspired by the anime classic Puella Madoka Magica - is to transmute trauma, and become God-like, to embody a literal concept that permeates space, time and every life to touches. The next best thing is to give unsolicited advice on TikTok, and start a religion. I recently met a New Yorker who is apparently this multimedia artist that makes $300k a year (mostly in real estate) and $18k a season, purely from their artwork. They were telling me about how selling fine art is about selling a vision - or it’s about control, and then used his friend’s work as an example:

His friend makes these hypnosis videos that covertly turn white straight men into trans folk, as if it were a community service. Then laughed about how his friends all joke about starting cults, and then proceeded to show me his friend’s Instagram life coaching business. The implication is that the wolves make the sheep sharper, and that tables can turn.

Ethics aside, institutionalized religion is truly a colonialist tradition: We will give you a sense of peace by establishing this tax-evasive property, rent -free (if not on your fertile land, in your mind).

And that’s the thing, isn’t it? Whether it be the politics that we subscribe to, witchcraft, the value of a subjective piece of art, this clearly wisened twenty-something’s life coach’s program, we all buy into a myth. Including International Women’s Month, as if we have to remind the world that we’re valuable when - time and again - we somehow manage not to get killed. But now you have the memo: We’re uploading our consciousness, and buying new God with our attention. (It’s designed in our own image, and it automated its social media feed). In Puella Madonna Magica, the main character Madoka does indeed become a God-like figure. And instead of swallowing the world whole as Walpurgisnacht (a play on the anti-witch day Walpurgis Night), as a concept of good, she visits all hopeless girls who who otherwise become a labyrinth of despair.

(Here's the climax of the series.)

When I first watched that, I thought of my 12 year old self, and 15 year old self, and 23 year old self, and bawled.

Feminine wiles can break hearts; maybe that’s why men kill us, I can only assume. I’m beginning to think that the only way that I can find lasting partnership with a man is if I embody a sexy anime archetype, start an Only Fans, and sell a fantasy (or my bathwater) to mentally ill, socially inept, and capitalistically-programmed people.

The alternative is that we actually live by our value — not that you needed my Moon in Taurus ass to tell you that. On every timeline and dimension, I wish that high vibe for every she, they, gay who finds themselves crying alone at night.

Sometimes it was your unconsciousness, but a lot of it wasn’t fair and apart of a history oppression and pain that we all inherited. May you find your righteous anger, the reclaiming of your sovereignty as your guiding light.

To you reader, as if it needs to be said, and there’s no funny way around this:

It wasn’t your fault.

And to you, you, and yours, remember:

You’re that bitch.

This is your month, and we’ll all continue to do what we can to make sure that it will always be your world too.

Happy International Women’s Month, every month, and always.

---

Lux Emené just ended her Saturn Return on her astrocartography Mars line, where she hopes to eventually escape its energetic hyper-masculine oppression, and dreams of living out the rest of the #HingsightIs2020 apocalypse in a mobile camper writing comedy, and traveling across the United States. She is currently writing a memoir on adolescent love.

In the off-chance you catch her fickle nature with online privacy, you can find her on Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok @morningcalmclub.