Many may first recognize Amber Tamblyn as the actress from such horror flicks and thrillers as The Ring or The Grudge films. Perhaps many also remember her as young filmmaker “Tibby Rollins” from The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants or, more recently, as part of the Inside Amy Schumer cohort of comediennes from numerous sketches such as the riotous “80s Ladies.” What many may not know, however, is Tamblyn is an accomplished poet with two chapbooks, Of the Dawn and Plenty of Ships and three collections of poems including Free Stallion (2005) and Bang Ditto (2009).
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An Interview With Light Witch Courtney Brooke On The Modern Witch, Location As Inspiration & Aesthetic
BY LISA MARIE BASILE
Your art is spiritual and feminine, but it can also be really gritty and intense; what story do you want to tell?
A story that is real, human and natural. As women, we have been told for centuries to be either the fairy tale princess lest we be the old hag, the evil witch. Within my work I am trying to connect to the endless possibilities, to show that even for a fleeting moment what one can dream, can be real. It’s part of what draws me to photography as a medium. It all has to happen in some form of reality for me to capture it. I want to create a world where we are tuned in with nature, with the cosmos, a world where women can be beautiful, mysterious, wise, and most importantly human first.
Why do you think the figure of the witch persists (and haunts) in today's culture?
The witch, for myself and I think for many other women as well, is a symbol of feminine strength and a woman with agency over her herself. She is not afraid to grow old and be wise. It is in her wisdom and agency though that she became something for men to fear. I like to think that she still persists because she is a symbol of what it is to be strong, to be human, to be in touch with one's self, nature and what some might call magic. Sadly we still need this symbol, women all over the world are still subjected and are deemed less than due to their gender. We are still fighting so many battles for women’s equality, trans-equality, and battles for the preservation of our natural world and the witch is a great symbol that speaks to those battles.
You come from New England, a fascinating, natural, sprawling region. How exactly does location work its way into your work. Beyond literally being shot in nature, what does the essence of place to do you?
A place remembers, a place holds its own history in its earth, in its nature. There is something here in New England that I can’t totally articulate, but it’s dark and ancient. The landscape and nature here refuses to be ignored, but it’s subtle, like a vine tearing down a brick wall or the craggy cliffs cut from slow moving glaciers thousands of years ago. Something here just feels so cloaked in mystery, nothing here feel obvious, and that’s part of what always pulls me back here, there is always something to discover, some crazy beauty, some strange occurrence that I didn’t quite notice the last time.
How did you discover and explore your aesthetic? When did you understand your drive and, really, how did you learn to execute it so well?
Honestly, I am still discovering and learning. Although I thank you for that compliment. I have ever since I have been a pre-teen been interested in the occult, feminism, nature and folklore. I guess you could say I still am and I am still exploring them. I just have this internal unquenchable urge to create and shoot. It’s like an addiction honestly. It was through that that I think I got better at execution, practice, lots and lots of trying and failing. I once had an art professor tell me that the moment you create a piece of work you are happy with is the day you stop creating. I have learned to never be happy with my work, but to let it pass though me in a sense, to me all my pieces are good enough for now.
Which other artists challenge and inspire you?
I feel pretty blessed to be living in a time that connects so many artists all over the globe and can put just about any art at my fingertips. In truth, I am in constant awe of my contemporaries that, regardless of how hard it is to be an artist and thrive in this economy, persist and create beautiful works of art. This may not be the challenge you are speaking of but it’s the challenge that I think all of us artists feel, and that’s how to make a living with our work. I am also so humbled to be able to call so many artists my friends and collaborators, such as Gillian Chadwick of Elemental Child, Bill Crisafi, and Jamie Mooers or Burial Ground, Allison Scarpulla, Tea Leigh, Steffanie Strazzere, Emily Theobald and Sam Dere of Paper Bunnies -- to name just a few.
Read more about Courtney Brooke here.
Source: http://www.lightwitch.com
Poems by Kristina Marie Darling & John Gallaher
WORD CAME TOO LATE TO BE OF ANY HELP BUT THANK YOU ANYWAY
And you have this moment where, instead of an issue being suddenly clarified, you realize it’s beyond you. This is a problem only if you studied for the test, because studying should lead to something. Then it’s, “No one is talking about the machinery they’re throwing overboard,” say hundreds of pink flamingoes talking with each other. There’s a sheen to things. The image of yourself much older appears, standing at the foot of your bed dressed for a formal event. “Am I travelling? Then I travel,” you think. First, to wash yourself, you take a bath or shower. Then what? It’s a secret, isn’t it? You’re just gone, as far as the rest of us can tell. The test was you, perhaps. And here we thought we were keeping score, but really it was some other way, and we’ve begun to worry about the mirrors that suddenly seem to be everywhere.
CHAPTER ONE
A cracked mirror, and all of the windows gone white with frost. I didn't want to say it, but I wondered where you were going with that story about our old house and the little ghosts you kept dragging up from the basement. Still, I stood there and listened, nodded appreciatively as the lights flickered and the cable went out. When you mentioned the scorecard, though, I knew something had to be done. You see, everything in this room adheres to principles, and changing the rules midway through the game can be dangerous. It's like deciding to experiment with particle physics for a day, or digging up all the flowers in a garden just to see what happens. Before you realize it, the freeway no longer leads to the grocery store. The mailbox isn't where you remembered it. And even the dishes you left on the table will be gone.
John Gallaher & Kristina Marie Darling were born in Portland and Tulsa. Their collaborations appear in OmniVerse, Requited, diode, and elsewhere. They currently live and write in rural Missouri, while also taking frequent trips on the bullet train from Paris to Agen.
Curator: Lisa A. Flowers is a poet, critic, vocalist, the founding editor of Vulgar Marsala Press, and the author of diatomhero: religious poems. Her work has appeared in The Collagist, Entropy, and other magazines and online journals. Raised in Los Angeles and Portland, OR, she now resides in the rugged terrain above Boulder, Colorado. Visit her here or here.
Photo credit: still from Jean Cocteau's The Blood of a Poet (1930)
Musician Shayfer James Talks About His 'Filthy Habit'
Shayfer James talked to us about his video "Filthy Habits."
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Three Entrancing Witches That Influenced My Childhood
BY TRISTA EDWARDS
I recently revisited an old childhood favorite, the 1971 film Bedknobs and Broomsticks. I’ve been thinking about how much certain movie witches positivity influenced when I was growing up and this film was the first to instantly pop into my mind. I had not watched the film in over twenty years but what I remembered from being a child was that the film had a very foreboding nature; (although that wasn’t quite the language I had for it then but I felt it) and there were several terrifying yet tantalizing scenes of Nazi attacks and witchcraft. An exceptionally brief synopsis for those who have not experienced the film, (released by Walt Disney Productions and marketed as a musical fantasy)—
Miss Eglantine Price (Angela Lansbury) is an apprentice witch living in the English countryside in 1940. She is learning witchcraft through correspondence school and receives spells, lessons, and potions in the mail from the school’s headmaster, Professor Emelius Browne (David Tomlinson). She is awaiting the arrival of spell for Substituitary Locomotion, a spell that will enable her bring inanimate objects to life. With this spell, Miss Price is conceived she will be to help the British war effort and, ultimately, defeat the Nazis.
By the end of the film Miss Price chants the incantation, Treguna Mekoides Tracorum Satis Dee, and erects a ghost army of medieval knights to drive the Nazis back to their U-boat. The many scenes of the medieval knights floating body-less, just shells of the past, still gives me the heebeegeebees to this day. When you think about it, this pseudo-occult film is pretty heavy stuff for a Disney musical and I loved it.
Now, some twenty years later, I realize how much this film, particularly witchcraft, played a role in how I see myself as a woman and as a writer. It was Miss Eglantine Price along with two other cinema witches from my formative years, The Little Mermaid’s Ursula (1989) and The Worst Witch’s Mildred Hubble (1986), that I bonded with and that gave me examples on how to be powerful woman.
Miss Eglantine Price
Miss Price’s obsessive quest to find the missing pages of The Spells of Astraroth instilled in me the power of words. I remember distinctly as a child fashioning my own spell book out of colored construction paper. I filled it with astrological symbols I saw in the film and gathered from horoscope section of the town newspaper. I made up words and my own spells of absolute gibberish. I indulged in the sheer enjoyment of language and the potential power it had. I would go out to the wooden swing hanging from a willow tree in the far corner of the yard with my spell book and my mom’s kitchen broom, place the broom on the seat of the swing, chant one of my spells, hop on and fly. Spells—language—could allow me to do anything. As a child this all seemed very literal in that I could make anything possible. I could fly. I could change shape. I could talk to animals. I could control the world around me all with an incantation even if it was all in the world of imagination. This carried on into adulthood and my occupation as poet. Language still allows me to do anything.
Ursula The Sea Witch
What intrigued me most about Ursula was her massive, rolling body. I thought she was beautiful and threatening. I was entranced by how she inhabited the entire space in which she existed. Much like the film’s protagonist, she was half-woman, half-sea creature—one resembling an octopus. Her lurching tentacles made her appear as if she gliding rather than plodding. This is my first recollected lesson that as woman you could have powerful body without it being sexualized. At the time of the film’s release, my chubby child body probably resembled Ursula’s more than the dainty, slim Ariel. I took comfort in this witch, albeit animated, corporeality. Even at a young age, I knew I would never look like Ariel but I could still believe in the authority of my body. Despite the fact that Ursula is the film’s villain and meets her demise in the end, I try to resist the urge to analyze the film as an academic—that Ursula had to die by the hand of Prince Eric as punishment for her body, which enlarged to giant proportions in the final battle. That she transgressed too far in her power and had to be silenced, to take the place of the role of silenced woman when Ariel found was allowed to have her voice back. I fight to resist this because villain or not, this witch gave me my first lesson in body positivity.
Mildred Hubble
Mildred Hubble (played by Fairuza Balk and proving she has always been the best witch) is a young girl at Miss Cackle’s Academy for Witches. The 1986 film is based on a series of children’s books by the same name. While not a bad witch she is deemed the worst witch at the academy due to many bumbling yet innocent mishaps. She falls victim to the many cruel pranks at the hand of bully and overachiever Ethel Hallow. Yet through the constant mistreatment from Ethel and the glaring lack of approval from her teacher Miss Hardbroom, Mildred still finds joy in being a witch (particularly at a ceremony in which all the little witches are given their first black kitten and Mildred, as the last girl awarded, is left with the only cat left, a white and gray tabby who she has nothing but love for despite the kitten’s otherness). Mildred, like me, was the shy and quiet girl who was always picked last. I felt that Mildred and I shared a level of companionship through my adolescence in that we both never seemed to get anything right for no apparent reason other than we were struggling to grow up and find our place in the world.
The Power Of The Herbal Household
BY SOPHIE MOSS
For most of us, the home is our safe haven. It’s the space in which we sleep, create, cook, nurture relationships, create art, celebrate successes, think our most private thoughts and feel our most deepest feelings, and is a space to be honoured. Just as we respect our homes by dusting away dirt and cleaning up messes, it is also helpful to clean away the energies and vibrations that harbour in our homes over time.
To extend the metaphor, there can be little doubt that an untidy, dirty, cluttered house takes its toll on our happiness and wellbeing, leaving us feeling stagnant, unhappy, and unhealthy. The energies that exist in our home are no different: allowing negative, stagnant energies to manifest in our safe, personal spaces can have a detrimental effect on our professional, personal and creative wellbeing, and it is important that we cleanse these spaces of unwanted energies in order to allow us to fulfill our utmost potential.
There are many ways one can cleanse the home, and these can vary from culture to culture, religion to religion. Using herbs, for instance, has played a major role in magick, religion and divination throughout history, and remains one of the most widely used tools for magick and healing today. In old magickal books, elaborate and strange herbal ingredients were often called upon to create a host of recipes and spells, such as adder’s tongue and the heart of a baboon (which are actually just unusual code names for plantain and oil of lily), and herbs have been historically used for homeopathy, natural medicine, and magickal applications such as health, healing and cleansing.
Below, we have created an easy, cost effective, do-it-yourself guide to using herbal magick to cleanse the home of cosmic nasties and invite health, happiness and prosperity into your household.
The Way of Herbs
There is no easier, cheaper and failsafe method of inviting prosperity into the household (and banishing negativity from it) than to use herbal magick, and I am absolutely fascinated with it. For me, there is something so inexplicably comforting and organic about placing one’s trust in the very Earth itself and, in turn, having this trust rewarded with love and protection.
The great thing about using herbal magick is that a) there are so many ways to use herbs, and b) we can use them for so many different purposes:
When it comes to inciting general positive vibrations into the home, a really easy way to do this is to incorporate herbal magick into your household decor. Buying small pouches or sachets from the store and filling them with different herbs, for example, is an easy way to not only spruce up the come with kitsch decor, but also to incite positive vibrations and a host of positive magical properties.
Hang a sachet filled with chamomile flowers from the doorknob in your bedroom to calm the nerves and promote natural sleep, or place a chestnut in the corner of your bedside table to bring love and peace into the bedroom. Similarly, you can sprinkle cumin seeds into a pouch and hang it from the doorknob of your kitchen cupboard as a general home blessing.
An interesting way to incorporate herbal magick into your household and inspire positive, protective vibrations is via a locket. Sprinkle fennel seeds into a locket and hang from your bedpost, nightstand, or even your jewelry stand to bring protection, purification, healing, passion, courage and strength. Alternatively, wear it around your neck and carry the good energies with you.
Sprinkle allspice in all four corners of the home, or burn it as incense. It is thought to attract success in both personal and business life.
After going through a difficult break up, moving into a new property, or embarking on a new venture, it is important to rebalance and realign the energies in a household, and an efficient way to do this is by performing a sage cleansing ritual. To perform this, purchase a sage smudge stick (I typically buy mine from natural food or new age stores) and set it over a flame-resistant bowl. With every window and door in the house open, light the stick, blow it out and watch as it begins to smoke. Visualising your intention, wave the stick gently and watch as the smoke glides through the room. As the smoke ghosts towards the far corners of the room… along the ceiling… around the windows… up the fireplace… imagine it absorbing the negativity, toxicity and harmful energies from the space, taking any cosmic nasties with it as it dissipates out the open windows. When you have cleansed each room of the house, extinguish the sage smudge stick and discard.
Research the different properties of different herbs, and see which ones are relevant to your needs and requirements, using as necessary. Remember, thorough research is absolutely imperative, as some herbs can be toxic once ignited or ingested.
A Magickal Garden
Indeed, if you are lucky enough to live in an area that affords you garden space (or, even, a window-box on a balcony area), you might want to take advantage of this blessing and plant a garden, grow some herbs, and harvest some plants. However, before jumping right into creating a magickal garden and earning your green thumb status, it is important to keep in mind the general magickal rules for gardening.
In her widely acclaimed book, Solitary Witch: The Ultimate Book of Shadows for the New Generation, magickal practitioner Silver Ravenwolf details a host of astrological rules and considerations for growing a successful magickal garden:
When collecting seeds, for instance, it’s better to do so when the moon is full, or in a fire or air sign — Aries, Sagittarius, Leo, Aquarius, Libra or Gemini.
If you are growing plants that will produce crops above ground (perfect for those of us who live in apartment buildings), it is important that they are sown the day after the new moon and up until the first quarter.
Growing plants that will produce crops below the ground, however, will require plantation during the day after the full moon.
When it comes to harvesting, the smallest harvests and fresh flowers needed for immediate ritual (or recreational! Or culinary!) use should be done in the evening, during which time the plants have maximum food reserves. Herbs and flowers that will be dried and preserved should be cut mid-morning, once the morning dew has cleared. Also, it is better to harvest fruit and vegetables during the waning moon, and when the moon is in the barren (or semi-barren) air or fire signs of Aries, Sagittarius, Leo, Aquarius, Libra or Gemini.
When cutting flowers, always try and cut the stem at a slant. This way, the stem can continue to absorb water and nutrients.
During the Autumn, when the last of the herbs, fruits, and vegetables have been harvested, the last of the dead leaves and plants should be cleared away. It is when the last of the dead plants have been swept that you can perform an Autumn Blessing. To perform this blessing is simple. Firstly, you stand in your garden and ignite a white candle, taking in your surroundings and giving thanks to the year’s harvest. When you feel ready, or when the candle has extinguished, simply bury it somewhere on your property. (Important: please, please take extra care with this if you have animals or small children and bury the candle in a place where children and animals won’t be able to find it. If this isn’t possible, keep it somewhere safe within the household.)
Solitary Witch also contains an incredibly helpful gardening guide to help you with your astrological timings when growing, planting or harvesting, such as being careful to plant beans in the second quarter when the moon is in Taurus, and planting house plants in the first quarter when the moon is in Libra, Cancer, Scorpio or Pisces. Seriously, that book is 590 pages of pure magickal wisdom.
Sophie E. Moss is a dark witch & literary maven. She writes essays for LunaLuna and poetry for all the people she used to be. @Sophiedelays
The Supernatural Life
After all, it’s very easy to dismiss another person’s experiences with the supernatural. I grew up in the northeastern part of the United States, where it’s more common to be closed-lipped about supernatural experiences.
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Here's An Actual Ghost Story From A Skeptic
BY RACHEL LYON
I don’t know if I believe in ghosts. But I have a ghost story.
Many years ago I worked in a haunted hotel on an island eight miles off the coast of New Hampshire. I’m not kidding when I say it is haunted. It’s been inhabited by white people since the 1600s. It’s been the site of massacres, epidemics. People have frozen to death. Starved. Been murdered. Etcetera.
I was a skinny girl back then—strong bones, worried eyes, wild heart. I was shy. Had a weakness for whiskey, an aversion to food. My second week on this island eight miles out to sea, a boy showed up. He was a storyteller. Loud voice, lots of charm. Everybody knew him except for me. His fondness for whiskey was weaker than mine.
One night we took a walk with our weakness to the back of the island, where the cliffs are highest. Above us, a trillion stars showered their long-dead light. Below us, black water smashed against rock. We sat and we drank and we talked and then we felt someone near us. Footsteps in the rose hip bushes, which grow in that wild wind. We said, Hello? Who’s there? Come join us. No one replied.
It was late anyway, and we’d finished our drink. We got up and made our way through the bushes. Heard footsteps behind us. Stopped. Said, Hello?
No one replied. We walked faster. The footsteps sped up. We walked faster still. The footsteps sped up more. We began to run. Tearing through the low bushes, sliding over wet rock, then mud. Breathless we reached the door to the hotel kitchen, where the pots are stacked on industrial rolling shelves by the sink, and the huge carving knives are stuck to a long magnet on the wall. At the bakery window, leftover pastries had been piled up and put out for the staff. We stopped there, freaked out and quiet. I hadn’t had dinner. The drinks had gone to my head.
We tore open a soft dinner roll. My back was to the wall; his was to the knives by the door. That was weird, he was saying. So weird, I said, but I was distracted. Behind him a knife seemed to be swinging.
They are hanging, I told myself as he talked. Those knives are just hanging there. We must have unsettled them when we ran in. But this knife was not swinging as a pendulum swings—that is, speeding up at the nadir of its swing, slowing down just before changing directions. It was moving steadily, as if someone were holding it. I watched it as he talked, trying to figure it out. Slowly it dawned on me—thickly, drunkenly—that those knives were not hanging, anyway. They were attached by a magnet. There was no way it could be swinging, at all.
Run! I shouted. We skidded on the wet floor and scrambled up the back stairs to his room, where he slammed shut the door and demanded, What did you see? I told him about the swinging knife. I was frightened as hell. I was shaking. Likely I cried.
In the morning at breakfast he told our coworkers—who all knew him so much better than they knew me—that I had experienced my first island ghost. It seemed like a rite of passage. Everyone had a ghost story. One girl told me she’d seen a woman walk through a wall. Someone else said that she’d seen a woman in white pacing by the small graveyard. Someone else had seen a child in the corner of his room, vomiting. The island was lousy with ghosts.
Somehow, though, despite all these stories, in the light of day I was beginning to doubt what I’d seen. I had been so worked up the night before, but now it seemed as if it couldn’t have been real. Maybe the knife had been on a hook, I tried to reason. None of those knives are on hooks, my friends said. Something must have been going on, I insisted. Someone must have been holding it. Maybe, they said. They shrugged, turned away.
Thing was, they all had their own ghost stories. Stories they’d told and retold. Stories that had grown over them, and which, like trees encircled by vines, they’d incorporated into their very selves. They told these stories without trying to convince. Without drama or intrigue. But do you believe it, I asked? Do you think it could have been real?
I never got a straight answer. Thing was, The question didn’t matter. What was belief? What was real? Reality was beside the point, like a figure next to its shadow. What mattered wasn’t the ghosts, but their stories.
(Image: Francesca Woodman)
The Magic of Playing Dress-Up
BY BEX VANKOOT
I don’t have a great memory when it comes to Halloween costumes past. The trick ‘or treating ended early for me when, at 12 or so, someone mistook me for a mom towering over my nine year old brother. I’ve had fun with the dress-up holiday - Anna Nicole Smith, Ursula the Sea Witch, a “hairy fairy” which involved putting a fairy costume on and not shaving - but the reasons why are about as clear to me as why I still sometimes slap on mascara and eyeshadow, why I still hunt for the perfect shade of red lipstick even though I hate the feel of lipstick.
Today’s Halloween costume traditions date back less than a century to the 1930s, but the roots of can be traced to the dawn of humanity. The Celts popularized rituals that involved dressing up to scare off the spirits and keep safe during a dangerous time of year.
Whether we are mimicking our parents, the animals we hope to hunt, the ancestors we loved or the things we fear the most, we’ve been doing this a long time. We learn gender roles. We discover a better way to catch food. We pass on stories. We make it through the longest, darkest, coldest nights. We’ve been costuming so well for so long that nowadays we do it all the time and barely notice. At what point does it lose its meaning?
The key to the power behind playing dress up is the ability to choose it, to make a conscious act. Costuming is supposed to be fun. Or strange and wild and ecstatic. Or solemn and grueling and transformative. Instead it becomes the act of putting on battle armour or an invisible cloak, carefully applying a mask so we can hide who we are and protect ourselves from the onslaught of the world. It becomes an act of desperation.
It isn’t wrong to do magic in desperate times. What good would it be to use our power to transform, even superficially, if not to keep ourselves alive, warm, housed, clothed, fed?
But how can we survive, let alone thrive, putting out that much energy every day just to keep our heads above water? How much of our safety or security can we be expected to sacrifice for the comfort of making magic on our own time?
And even if we finally do get some space to play around with being ourselves, how do we untangle the things we want from the things we’ve been taught to do?
When I have a crush on someone, the urge to put on makeup and a push-up bra becomes almost overwhelming. I barely noticed it before I came out as a demi-woman. Now I can’t help but ask myself when I feel the urge to femme: do I want this? Or do I think this is what’s expected of me?
Sometimes the answer is both. Sometimes we really are having fun. And we can’t always change our response, even when the answer is that we’re bowing to expectations, even when we want to change. Sometimes we don’t have any good choices.
But knowing why, taking the time to question, is still a worthwhile process. I still don’t know exactly why a guy a like makes me want long lashes I can bat at him, but I can take a few guesses. That doesn’t mean I won’t feel it again next time. It doesn’t even mean I don’t want to. It just means I can put my mind and my heart behind it all the way, because I know what that magic means.
Salem: Is it a Must-See Destination for the Occult?
BY ALAINA LEARY
As a kid, I was enchanted by Salem at Halloween. Growing up just outside Boston, Salem was one of the hottest travel destinations for Halloween night for kids, teens, and adults in the area. Grasping my mom’s hand, I felt that I was a part of something larger – something magical.
I’ve always been sympathetic to the plight of those harmed by the witch trials in Salem in the 17th century. As a child, I saw these people as mere outsiders, those who maybe came off as quirky or different in society. Not all who were accused were even experimenting with anything occult. Jenny Rogers sums it up in her essay in Autostraddle: “A few young girls from well-to-do families allegedly experimented with trivial fortune-telling — the kind of folk rituals that claim to tell girls who their husband will be. Afterwards or around the same time, children in the village began to fall ill with alarming symptoms — convulsions, claims of pain all over their bodies, fevers and hallucinations. Witchcraft was suspected.”
According to Rogers, people think the real life probably causes ranged from ergotism from hallucination-causing fungi, biological illness, true mass hysteria, or simply an easy way to kill off women and men who were “disliked, too powerful or inconvenient.”
Two years in a row, I’ve gone to Salem around Halloween. Not exactly on the weekend that the holiday falls, but sometime when it’s nearing in October. What was on my mind while I was there was this: is Salem a good place for those who are genuinely interested in witchcraft and the occult, in the way that they are practiced today, to visit? Or is it simply a tourist city, filled with too many black cat mugs and cheesy professional witch photography?
As someone who actually did Salem Vintage Photos with my girlfriend’s family during one of my two Salem visits this year, I can say this: there’s a fair amount of both hokey and legitimate to be found in Salem, and it all depends on what you’re looking for.
Salem capitalizes on its reputation to foster tourism, and I can’t blame them. It probably brings in enough revenue just in the fall to profit the local economy year-round. If you’re into cheesy, spooky tourism, there’s plenty to be found in the area, from the Harry Potter themed store selling Butterbeer and wands to the hokey haunted houses to the vintage white dress-up photos, it’s a prime destination for kids with families who just want to gawk. To be fair, the witch photos are a great way to get a laugh out of everyone involved, even if they’re super cheesy, with poses on broomsticks while a fan blows your hair out of your face.
The slightly-less-hokey tours are one way to connect past and present. It depends on the tour, since there are quite a few, but many of them seamlessly blend the history in a way that is factual and pays tribute to the people who were tortured and killed during the trials. The Bewitched After Dark Walking Tours, Salem Witch Walk, and Candlelit Tours are known for being detailed and informative.
There’s also plenty to see if you’re interested in learning more about modern witchcraft and the occult. Magic Parlor has a lot of gags and jokes, but there are items like candles, herbs, incense, and oils in the back of the shop. It’s also less expensive than a lot of other frequently visited tourist stores. Pyramid Books offers psychic readings, stones, candles, jewelry, and everything ranging from Wicca to Reiki. Artemisia Botanicals is an apothecary filled with over 400 herbs, 100 teas, and more magick. Crow Haven Corner is said to be Salem’s first witch shop, and hosts classes in addition to readings with Tarot, palms, and mediumship. My friends and I found that it matched its quality items, such as smudge sticks and hand-mixed spells, with its tourist items.
I also attended a psychic reading last year, and a spell casting this year. The psychic reading had me more skeptical, as a lot of what was said seemed very general and like it could easily apply to anyone. The spell casting was a lot more interesting, and was held by a woman who said she’s a practicing witch. She left us by saying “Blessed be,” to everyone, and we cast powerful, positive spells under all the elements and with the power of the spirits. I felt a palpable energy in the room as we all chanted, “So mote it be!” as we held our spells in between the palms of our hands.
A few weeks later, I buried the knotted string, the source of my spell and positive energy, into the ground at the base of a beautiful tree in a Boston park. I spoke my desires aloud as I buried it, because giving voice to your spells is said to make them more powerful. Everything that I cast was in hopes of a brighter future for the people I love, so even if a lot about Salem has the potential to be cheesy, I feel this is one experience that I really want to believe in.
I’m giving my spell a chance to settle its roots and grow.
7 Black Cats: A History Of The Myths Surrounding Black Felines
BY ALAINA LEARY
The first thing I learned at my friend Emma’s house was that she had seven black cats. They varied greatly in their personalities and appearances, including one small kitty with only three legs that was constantly zipping around the house at top speed.
I studied veterinary science in high school, but I didn’t realize how bad of a reputation black cats had until I met all seven of Emma’s. “They have a much smaller chance of being adopted, so we just take them in,” she would tell me. Emma and her parents volunteered regularly at the local shelter.
Black cats are less than half as likely to be adopted as gray cats, and 26.1% of people consider fur color when adopting a new cat. Many organizations don’t allow black cats to be adopted during October because of mistreatment and abuse. Volunteers like Emma keep black cats safe during these months – and sometimes fall in love with the ones at the shelter and take them home.
Historically, black cats have had a slew of myths associated with them, not all of which center around bad luck. In Ancient Egypt, all cats were considered good luck, and according to Scottish folklore, having a black cat in your home would bring you great wealth.
Freya, the Nordic goddess of love, marriage and prosperity, was said to have her chariot pulled by pairs of cats with black fur.
However, there are also negative portrayals of black cats throughout history, including the Greek myth about Galenthia, who was turned into a cat and became a priestess at the Temple of Hecate (the “Dark Mother”), sometimes known as the mother of witchcraft.
During the 12th and 13th centuries, black cats were synonymous with witches’ “familiars” in Europe, and in the 17th century during the witch-burning era in America, cats were often burned alongside the supposed witches. It was said that witches could also turn into black cats themselves, which added to the fear associated with them.
In the Middle Ages, black cats were akin to Satan himself, leading to the capture and slaughter of the animals. Black cats are also commonly used in ritual sacrifice, which is enough of a problem today that it hinders shelters from openly adopting them out.
When I publically shared my concern for other animal owners to keep their black cats indoors for October, one of my friends told me that she had witnessed a black cat’s brutal murder by neighborhood kids as a child. I’ve never been more struck than in that moment. The threat of harm to black cats always seemed like a myth to me, until suddenly it wasn’t. It was a distressingly real image in my mind as I petted my own kitty, whispering to her that she was loved and safe.
Today in England, giving a bride a black cat is considered good luck, and they are also considered lucky in Ireland as well. I would be overjoyed if someone gave me a free black cat on my wedding day – no, seriously, this is a hint to my friends for the future.
This year, I moved into an apartment with my girlfriend and my first thought was to adopt a cat, because my 12-year-old fat tabby had finally passed away at my parents’ home. Originally, I had my heart set on an orange kitten, but we took a spontaneous trip to the shelter one Tuesday afternoon just to take a look. It was the anniversary of my mom’s death, and my mom was the person who taught me to love all cats growing up. My girl and I met a pair of bonded cats - one round and tabby, the other fluffy and black - and we fell in love instantly. Within a few days, we had welcomed the two lovely kitties into our new home.
My black cat, named Blue, is often known for curling up in between us in bed, purring steadily and loudly, and for jumping at door handles to try to get into closed-off rooms. Her meow is tiny and kitten-like, and she looks at everything with wide inquisitive yellow-green eyes. I was surprised by the number of people who made seemingly harmless jokes when they found out I adopted a black cat – “Won’t she be bad luck? Don’t let her cross your path!” I thought those attitudes had disappeared, but they still lingered, even when my family and friends were unaware of the danger behind their words.
Shelters still have a harder time adopting out black cats, and the one where I got my cat had flyers hanging that described reasons why a black cat would make a great companion. I don’t need a flyer to convince me. All I have to do is peer into the basket in my room and find Blue cuddled up among the blankets, her head cocked in my direction, to know why.
The World Still Doesn't Understand Witchcraft
BY MACEY LAVOIE
We all have seen it: on Halloween night, a gaggle of witches gambit about, either hunting for treats or off to a party. October is the month when you sport a pointed hat and smile, even say an incantation or two, all in the holiday spirit. But here is something to think about - witchcraft is not exclusive to October. People around the world have begun to embrace the term “witch” in their everyday lives.
We all know of the witch hysteria that happened in Salem, Massachusetts, and we also know that a majority of those executed probably never attempted witchcraft in their lives. They were simply marked as different and that was enough to send them to the noose. Luckily we no longer live in those times and you can’t be accused of witchcraft simply because your neighbor said so. However, that wasn’t the first time women (and one man) were killed under the accusation of witchcraft.
Let’s be honest here, despite the fascination everyone has with witchcraft and magic, if you express a general interest in practicing, you receive odd looks at best. Some think you are doing it to get attention, some believe your so-called religion is a hoax, and others call what you do “Satan’s work,” which is by no means a compliment. Since the Middle Ages witches, women that did not fit the societal standard, have been feared and sent to burn. The famous Joan of Arc, a woman who led the French in battle, was captured and burned at the stake for witchcraft before she turned twenty.
In there lies the problem with witchcraft - its encouragement of female empowerment. While men are known and encouraged to participate in the craft as well, it is predominantly female-led. In recent years more people have begun to explore “witchcraft” in tarot cards and other occult tools. You can easily find them in bookstores and other common places.
Witchcraft focuses on the worship of the goddess, though they have gods too, and nature. It revolves around a kind of power that doesn’t bow to social norms and is expressed as being within. It seems to promote power in women in particular, which can be scary to a patriarchal world and something that has been suppressed for generations. Modern day witchcraft has nothing to do with cursing or killing. In fact, one of the first rules is to harm none. In fact, back in the day a lot of women accused of witchcraft were merely successful in endeavors not fit for women. A lot of the accused witches were women who used herbs and natural remedies to cure ailments. As medicine became a more professional field, studied and dominated by men, the use of healing women became taboo.
In some areas of the world, women are still accused and killed for witchcraft. This is common in places such as Papua New Guinea and Nepal. There is even an Anti-Witchcraft unit in the religious police department of Saudi Arabia that is tasked with rooting out and killing condemned witches. Although this sounds like it’s something out of a story, it’s very real.
While some corners of the world still fear and harm witches, things are starting to look up. Wicca is seen as a legitimate religious practice around the world and pop culture is slowly redefining the whole ugly evil witch label. Today we have great examples of kickass role model witches such as “the brightest witch of her age” Hermione Granger and other witches in Harry Potter, the entire coven from American Horror Story in its third season and the sisters of Charmed.
There is renewed hope for the witches of the world and if you feel you connect with that world, then you have the potential to explore it. Remember - we are the granddaughters of the witches they weren’t able to burn.
Interview With Leza Cantoral About Her Novelette Planet Mermaid
BY NADIA GERASSIMENKO
Leza Cantoral is the author of Planet Mermaid and editor of Walk Hand in Hand Into Extinction: Stories Inspired by True Detective. She writes a feminist column about noir film for Luna Luna Magazine called Shades of Noir and writes about pop culture for Clash Media. Her upcoming collection of short stories, Cartoons in the Suicide Forest, will be coming out later this year through Bizarro Pulp Press. You can find her short stories at lezacantoralblog.wordpress.com and tweet her at @lezacantoral.
Leza, tell us a bit about yourself as a person and a writer.
I was born in Mexico and my family moved to the US when I was 12. I spent high school in the suburbs of Chicago and then I went to college in Vermont. Now I live with my boyfriend and his two cats in the mountains of New Hampshire. It is a pretty idyllic existence for a writer. He is a writer too, so we are always able to give each other feedback and we are each-others editors. He was my rock during this process. I hit a lot of walls with my story and he was there for me. He did not let me quit.
My favorite singer is Lana Del Rey. My favorite poet is Sylvia Plath. My favorite book is Alice in Wonderland.
I began writing poetry when I was about 13 to deal with depression and then I wrote poetry in high school to deal with being in love. It was not till college that I began to seriously consider writing stories. I often write about women who are being violated and exploited. I show what they are feeling and thinking and how they cope and deal with it. I believe that language is oral. Stories are meant to be read aloud. I try to make my stories sensory experiences, like music videos.
We know you write horror fiction. What’s horrific to you? What kind of horror do you want to embed in the mind of your readers?
What scares me is losing control and being broken down and degraded. I have written a lot about women being raped and exploited. I try to convey what it feels like to be raped and abused, to be treated like a sex object, to lose your humanity. Those are the things that really scare me. I want people to know what that feels like to be stripped of your selfhood.
You also write Bizarro fiction. What makes Bizarro literature Bizarro as opposed to just being weird? What criteria must the author meet in order to birth a legitimate Bizarro baby?
The key to Bizarro fiction is high concept. You take an idea that seems completely out there and unbelievable and then you have to make it work. Bizarro is a mudpie genre. It borrows liberally from Surrealism, Dada, Metafiction, Horror, Satire, Expressionism, Cartoons, Videogames, Cult cinema, you name it. When you write a Bizarro book you are basically designing your own religion. Your world follows its own rules of causality but it still follows the rules of character development and plot arcs.
Planet Mermaid is a spinoff on The Little Mermaid with an even more horrific albeit plausible storyline and a futuristic twist. What made you decide to write about this one particular fairy tale over another?
I am very inspired by fairy tales. I will continue to draw from them as well as fantasy, horror, and science fiction. I love fairy tales because they are simple and true. Many fairy tales are about rites of passage from girlhood to womanhood. I picked The Little Mermaid because I found the image of a mermaid with a human to be very compelling. I wondered if they would fall in love and what sex would be like between them. I am fascinated by the ocean. It is a strange world that seems as alien to me as outer space. I love the Hans Christian Andersen story. It is very lyrical and haunting. Also, I was disturbed by the misogynistic vibe of the Disney version. I wanted to address some of those things in my own way. I work with materials that both fascinate and repulse me. I mix something pretty with something ugly and my brain tries to make sense of it.
A good writer is able to create believable characters and bring liveliness in them. In Planet Mermaid, not only is the main protagonist Lilia alive and compelling, but it feels like you were able to breathe her in and truly become her. Was it difficult to do so?
She is me but she is not. She is her own person but I drew from my own feelings and experiences. Honestly, I think the story is actually a metaphor about what it was like for me to move from Mexico to the Midwest when I was 12 years old. It was a desolate landscape, just like the surface of Planet Mermaid. There were pros and cons. I lost my friends but I gained new opportunities. I always felt like an alien. My first story in high school was about an alien who falls to earth and gets exploited by Hollywood. Basically if Marilyn Monroe was actually an alien. These themes of alienation and exploitation run through all my work. The hardest part to write was the rape scene. I was stuck for weeks on it. I just could not write it. It was too traumatic for me.
Planet Mermaid reads like prose, but it has more of a poetic feel to it—very lyrical and melodic. It’s also very visually-striking—stark at times, vibrant in other instances. Did any artists in particular influence the way it was written?
I admire the style and language of writers like Vladimir Nabokov, Oscar Wilde, and Marcel Proust. I also love the visceral intensity of horror authors like Poppy Z. Brite and Clive Barker. Tanith Lee and Angela Carter were my main muses, as far as how to do a modernized fairy tale. Anne Sexton and Sylvia Plath are my main poetic muses. I love their powerful imagery and how their poetry is beautiful but also raw and emotionally supercharged. Sylvia Plath is my main literary influence. When I read Ariel I wanted to write stories the way she writes poetry. I wanted to recreate that surrealistic horror in prose.
We at Luna Luna also love Lana Del Rey—she’s our goddess and our muse. How did you discover her? Was it love at first ‘hearing’?
My boyfriend, Christoph Paul, is who turned me on to her. A year and a half ago I moved to New York City to follow my heart and be with him. That summer all I listened to was Lana Del Rey. I think he is finally sick of her now because she is all I play. I adore her. I was hooked instantly. She inspires my writing, my fashion, probably even my behavior. When I get into something I go full Method with it. When I was younger Madonna was my muse. I taught myself to sew so I could make costumes and dress up like her. I really thought I was her. In high school Courtney Love was my fashion and literary muse. ‘Live through This’ had a massive influence on my poetry. It has been a while since a muse swept me up like this. Lana has the stuff. She is true raw talent and that is why she is so special. Smoke and mirrors can only get you so far.
What motto do you live by?
Be yourself, believe in yourself, and be true to yourself.
Any advice to aspiring authors out there?
Write every single day even if you do not feel inspired. Be humble and work hard. Read a lot and read a lot of different kinds of things. Reach outside of your comfort zone. Make yourself visible on more than one social media platform. Facebook is ok but Twitter has a much wider reach. These days, writing is not just locking yourself up in a garret and sending your ink and tear stained manuscript to one loyal patron. This is a multimedia age. You are in control of your own image, so craft it. Interact with your readers. Humility, hard work, and focus will get you a long way. Talent is useless without focus and dedication.
Nadia Gerassimenko is a Media Relations Manager for Yeti Culture, Freelancer in editorial services, and Assistant Editor at Luna Luna Magazine by day, a moonchild and poet by night. Nadia self-published her first poetry collection Moonchild Dreams (2015) and hopes to republish it traditionally. She's currently working on her second chapbook a chair, a monologue. Visit her at tepidautumn.net or tweet her at @tepidautumn.
Photo credit: still from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974)
24 Hours Of Halloween: Poems By Jeffrey Hecker
Before terrorists can slay my family at our breakfast
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On Sylvia Plath, The Tarot And Bad College Writing
BY PATRICIA GRISAFI
The file name is embarrassing enough: “Sylvia Plath and My Fabulous Genius Paper.” The essay itself is excited, earnest, overblown, quick on impressions - in essence, a typical college English paper written by an enthusiastic fan. But I look back at this sloppy, eager mess of words with kindness and generosity, as it’s probably one of the most sincere documents I’ve ever written - and a genuine attempt at self-discovery.
The actual title of the essay is less mortifying than its file name: “Sylvia in the Lion’s Mouth: Symbolic Transformation and Rebirth in ‘Ariel.’” A long-time Plath reader and budding scholar, I spent hours in the college library making exciting discoveries about her life. One day, I learned that Plath practiced the Tarot. Although I had observed Tarot imagery in poems like “Ariel,” “Daddy,” “The Hanging Man,” and others, I hadn’t known that Plath and husband Ted Hughes used tarot cards, the Ouija board, and divining tools to help foster creativity. So, for my sophomore college poetry class, I decided to write an essay on Plath and the Tarot, specifically lion imagery in “Ariel.”
Perched on my desk chair like I imagine Beethoven at the piano - crazy-eyed, hair flying - I pounded out what I thought was the most incredible essay on Sylvia Plath. Not only would the language impress my professor, who was one of those serious, sweater wearing, name dropping kinds (“We had Robert Pinsky over the other night for tea”), but my argument would be wholly original. Surrounded by seven beta fish all named Rasputin, piles of books, and my Tarot pack, I worked deep into the night.
I’m not very spiritual, and I don’t practice the Tarot anymore. But at the time, I was entranced by the cryptic images of the Raider-Waite deck and consulted the cards constantly. The card I was most interested in was Strength.
Even though I remember my sophomore year of college as a time of discovery, fun, and experimentation, my life leading up to that point had been somewhat troubled. For most of my adolescence, I suffered from unchecked depression and anxiety and often felt powerless, invisible, and misunderstood. I would meditate on the Strength card, transfixed by the calm expression on the woman’s face as she nonchalantly pries open the lion’s jaws (looking at the card now, she seems to be merely petting the lion’s snout as he looks lovingly at her, and I wonder why I saw such violence when currently I see none). I read deeply into the struggle between the woman and the lion. Like most burgeoning academics, I tried to work out my own psychodrama through literary analysis. Here’s an excerpt from my bad college essay:
“God’s lioness” (4) is a loaded image that describes the horse and the poet as they become one during the ride. Merged with the animal, the speaker obtains a sense of power and strength not previously apparent within her. In the Tarot tradition, the “Strength” card depicts a woman wrestling with, prying open, or closing the jaws of a lion is usually depicted. This is an act of brute force; the woman’s intention is to elicit cooperation from the wild beast.
The “Strength” card symbolizes inner spiritual strength and fortitude, overcoming obstacles, and victory against overwhelming odds (Hollander 64-65). More so, the lion is also symbolic of desperate boldness, the fire within, the ‘beast within,’ fear, passion, and loss in surrender. Through rebirth, the speaker wishes to gain all of these qualities. She surrenders, losing the psychological battle but winning the creative one.
As a college English teacher, I would be quite pleased to receive an essay with a section like this. I might turn to my colleagues with a silly smile and declare that we’ve won ourselves a new Plath devotee, as if we ran a secret club. We might laugh about the essay’s pretensions, the lack of evidence, the sprawl of it all - but I think we’d identify the student as a kindred spirit.
The date on the paper is October 28th - one day after Plath’s birthday. When I think of Sylvia Plath around her birthday, I think of her devastating poem “A Birthday Present,” especially these lines:
I do not want much of a present, anyway, this year.
After all I am only alive by accident.
I would have killed myself gladly that time any possible way.
Now there are these veils, shimmering like curtains,
The diaphanous satins of a January window
White as babies’ bedding and glittering with dead breath.
I also think of this quote from Al Alvarez, who maintains that Plath’s occultism consumed her towards the end of her life:
“I hardly recognised Sylvia when she opened the door. The bright young American house wife with her determined smile and crisp clothes had vanished along with the pancake make-up, the school-mistressy bun and fake cheerfulness. Her face was wax-pale and drained: her hair hung loose down to her waist and left a faint, sharp animal scent on the air when she walked ahead of me up the stairs. She looked like a priestess emptied out by the rites of her cult. And perhaps that is what she had become. She had broken through to whatever it was that made her want to write, the poems were coming every day, sometimes as many as three a day, unbidden, unstoppable, and she was off in a closed, private world where no one was going to follow her.”
Plath would have turned eighty-three this year. It’s not difficult for me to imagine her at this age because my friend and I ran into her doppelgänger at the Merchant House Museum the other week. Our docent, an elderly woman with a stylishly retro hairdo and a dirndl skirt, lectured in a thick Boston accent on the social customs of family life in turn of the century Manhattan. When we left, my friend and I turned to each other and grinned: “That was totally Sylvia Plath, right? That’s exactly what she would look like now, isn’t it?” The idea of Sylvia Plath living, being a docent at an infamously haunted museum, and teaching us about Victorian gardens, seems much more beautiful than the terrible reality of her suicide.
I’m not a particularly sentimental person, and I don’t tend to save things - especially essays written in college. But I keep “Sylvia Plath and My Fabulous Genius Paper” around. I transfer it to each new computer and place it in a file called “College Writing” (which is filled with bad poetry, but that’s another story). Every year around Plath’s birthday, as I’m fluttering about the apartment stuffing foam brains into faux-bloodied mason jars and arranging knobby gourds in a battered basket, I imagine Plath fixated on her Tarot pack or hunched over the Ouija board. I wonder what she was looking for.