Burning Witches Pt. 2: From Accusation To Exoneration

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Hello, and welcome to Practically Magick.

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I am Courtney Pearl, your Pagan Folk Witch, Card Reader, Healer, Spiritualist, Celtic Priestess, Teacher, Artist, Mystic Seeker.

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I am discovering true and real Magick in the world, and I am here to share it with you.

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I am going to start today's episode.

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This is a two part episode, so if you did not already listen to last week's episode where we started our topic on Witches and witch trials.

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Please go back and have a listen.

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You will get to hear a little bit of my personal story as a reincarnated witch of the Salem witch trials.

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Yes, that's right.

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I said reincarnated witch of the Salem witch trials.

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I know everybody has their claim to being a witch from the Sandlin witch trials, but I think I have a pretty convincing story.

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And you know what? Even if you don't believe it's true, I'm going to run with it.

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I'm going to go ahead and pretend it's true.

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I also talk a little bit about leading up to the wave of witch trials happening all over Europe in the 16, 1500s, 1600s.

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And then of course, the wave of witch trials happening in New England states in America in the late 1600s and early 1700s.

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Talk a little bit about the historic implications and some of the names to remember, names, dates, and places to remember about those witch trials.

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And leading up to our topic that we are going to talk about today.

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So before we get into all of that, and before we talk about our next part of this episode on witch trials, Where we talk a little bit about the why of it all.

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I'm going to go ahead and pull a card.

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In last episode, we pulled a card from the Witch's Wisdom tarot deck and we did get the, uh, the card of love.

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And that could be a broad overview card.

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for the entire two part episode, but I feel like this second part deserves its own card.

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So I'm going to go ahead and pull a card for today's episode before we really get into what we're going to talk about next.

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All right.

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Part two, we're really going to focus As I'm ready to pull this card from the witch's wisdom deck, I really want to call in the spirits and ancestors of witches that came before me, because as you will learn in today's episode, as you will get to hear, most of these women never called themselves witches.

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They were on trial for being witches, which means that they were women living their lives.

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And I want to do them justice I believe that telling their story and naming their names gives them the power back that they had taken from them when they were accused and sentenced and executed for witchcraft.

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And so today's card is going to be in honor of them.

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Oh my goodness.

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And the card that I have pulled for this episode today is number 15.

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It's the journey card.

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And I love this because in the card, I'm going to show it.

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On camera, you can't see the details very well, but I'm going to describe it a little bit.

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It's kind of like a canyon.

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You see the mountains on either side and it dips into this valley in the middle.

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There is a lot of vortex happening in this card.

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So the letter V is in the canyon with both of the sides of the mountain sloping inward to the center of the card.

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And then you also have in the sky, an image of some geese flying in the V shape.

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So it's kind of like this arrow sign or it's pointing and deep into the canyon in kind of a small far away detail, you can see a white horse being led by a person.

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Someone who is on an epic journey.

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And this really accumulates the symbolism of going on a journey and having all of these trials and tribulations, all these like mountains to climb and hills.

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It's giving this impression that there is a lot to overcome, but there is still a lot that we already have overcome.

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And that's kind of the meaning of the journey.

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in and of itself.

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That we're going through ups and downs and crevices and canyons and mountains and hikes and all of these things.

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It's kind of the journey of life.

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And this really makes me feel like everything that we've been through in our history, when we look back over human history of all of time, there has always been marginalized people, people of color or people of different races or people of different religions, and definitely of.

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different genders or different sexes that are going through a lot to prove their worth and to prove their, their right to be here, their right to have just as much abundance and prosperity as the rest of us.

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And so right in the center of this canyon, you see this beautiful little watering hole, this lake in the center where it would be like a source of water, a source of life, a source of abundance right there in the center.

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And it kind of gives this idea to all of us, no matter what we're going through, no matter what we've been through, no matter what we're about to go through, all the hard things, all of the effort, all the work, this little lake in the middle is our rest.

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It's our moment to stop and reflect.

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It's our moment to stop and nurture ourselves and to take what we need out of it.

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And in doing this episode, I really feel like this is my chance to take all of the horrors that witch trials and witch hunts have given, especially the women, the female sex, takes that and it gives it some power back in being able to explain what was happening.

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Now we left off where half hanged Mary and the poem that was written by Margaret Atwood about Half hanged Mary.

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So today we're going to get into a little bit of the next, the next thing that I want to talk about.

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So now we're into the late 1600s.

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We have the Salem Witch Trials, of course.

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Now there is.

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a whole season of unobscured podcasts where you can get into gritty detail about what led up to the Salem Witch Trials because it was not, again, in a vacuum.

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It did not happen just in this town to these people.

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You get a sense the way that Alan Menke describes it and how he sets the for you.

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You get a sense and understand how it came to be that Because of things happening politically, because there was a change in power on the throne of England at the time, it sort of left the door open for these trials to run rampant in Salem.

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But I do want to kind of note some figures that are worth noting.

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Some of my favorite people in this story of the Salem Witch Trials.

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Because you have Sarah Good, one of the first people to be accused.

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She was, uh, someone who was born into money and had money.

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Her father had land and wealth, but she and her first husband had got, had lost all of it and gotten into quite a bit of debt.

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So she and her second husband, they became homeless beggars.

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So she was known for going around town and asking people for food.

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Food knocking on people's doors.

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She had two children to look after, and they were basically sleeping in people's barns.

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And she was also known for muttering under her breath when someone denied her food or shelter and said, you know, get out of here, go away.

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She would sort of curse and mutter.

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I love that because it's notable, you know, to figure out that her only crime truthfully was being a victim.

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of the economic climate of the town and of the times.

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You have Bridget Bishop, who was, um, noted to be a feisty, fun loving innkeeper.

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She was the first one to be executed in the trials, um, and she had been accused already in 1680, um, but she was accused again because the Chautauqu family's son.

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Became very sick and that she was lumped in with Alice Parker.

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Alice Parker was one of the names of witches that were also accused of making their son sick.

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Um, you have Martha Carrier, who was known, was called a rampant hag by Cotton Mather.

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And basically her crime was independence of mind and an unsubmissive character.

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It's interesting that the Salem witch trials, finally in 1702, the Massachusetts Court decided the trials were unlawful and 22 convictions were overturned, um, from the trials, but it wasn't until, so in 1957, they had a resolution on the books, but in 2001, it wasn't until 2001 In my lifetime.

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Okay.

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That the last few names were exonerated in the witch trials.

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So Alice Parker, it wasn't, it was because of her descendants that they finally, um, in the court system legally, were able to overturn this conviction of being a witch in 2001.

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And it doesn't end there.

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It wasn't until 2022, which was only two years ago, that the very last name, Elizabeth Johnson, Was conviction was overturned and signed by Governor Baker, Massachusetts.

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So I just wanted to point that out that it actually took until 2022 for finally every member of the.

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Victims of the Salem witch trials were finally exonerated from their convictions, from their crimes.

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So what typically happens when someone is accused? Okay.

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So if I'm looking at all of these witch trials and I have been accumulating all of these stories to kind of present for you today, a lot of common themes that I see is that when they're brought in, when they're arrested and brought to jail, They're usually checked over, um, they're completely naked.

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Someone has to check every inch of their body.

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Um, I'm sure that especially in times when this was, um, you know, people were much more conservative about their.

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bodies, that something like this would be extremely traumatic.

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To be forced to go into the jail and to be checked for witch's marks.

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They were looking for, um, any sign like marks or moles, or they would call them like teats where their familiars would suckle from, things like this that are just basically scars, birthmarks, and moles.

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And this is interesting to me because when I first started emotional processing, I went to my very first emotional process because I was having a visceral strange reaction to moles.

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Every time I saw a mole on someone else's body or On my own, you know, thought about my own body with moles.

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Cause I do have moles.

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I am.

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I, I do.

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Um, beauty marks, if you will, if you prefer, I would have a literal shaking and crying reaction to it.

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I couldn't even call a dermatologist and make an appointment to have them checked without sobbing on the phone, without taking anti anxiety medication, just to make it to the doctors.

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And by the way, I never did actually make it to the doctor.

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I had like, a huge, uh, reaction in the car on the way there and couldn't ever actually get to the dermatologist's office until I had had an emotional process session.

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When I did emotional processing and I processed some of the things that connect my spirit and my body together, imperfections like moles was a sort of, um, touch point for that issue.

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When I got to process that, when I got to really figure that out, it completely made the issue go away.

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I was able to go to the dermatologist after that and I was able to have some moles removed on my back without any issues.

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Um, but I find the story about moles interesting because that there is a connection there where I have this reaction to moles like, Oh, I wonder if that has anything to do with my previous life of being checked for moles.

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Because I'm a witch.

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Then a lot of times these women, sometimes men, there are men in witch trials too, but they're much less common.

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Um, they would be kept in the jail for months, months and months, sometimes years in many of the trials that I have been researching, there are at least a few people who die before they even make it to their trial because they're kept in such poor conditions.

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They're kept in jails with.

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That are extremely dirty.

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They get very sick.

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Um, they're not fed very well.

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It's, um, it's very sad, the conditions that they have to live in, and even one of the notable characters, most common character of the Salem Witch Trials, which is Tituba.

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She was, um, she was one of the only ones I can see from record that was released.

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She was sort of the, the catalyst for a lot of the spark that happened in this.

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In those trials of, like, what stories were told, because they had already arrested 30 people, and then Tituba created this story about how she had seen the devil's book, and she was made to sign the devil's book with ink that looked like blood, and that, um, there were at least nine other names that she could see in that book.

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Now Tituba, I have to imagine she was under threat of death, and so she came up with this story, but to her credit, she didn't name anybody else.

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She just said there are nine names, and this kind of kept the wheel spinning as far as keeping the magistrates busy.

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looking, right? They wouldn't stop looking for more witches until they had those nine names.

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And it wasn't until later that one of the other people accused said, Oh no, there's not just nine names.

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There's actually 40 because I've seen 40 different women dancing with the devil in the woods.

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Right? This just keeps that witch hunt going, because people, they won't stop until they feel the fear subside.

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They feel that they're safe again, and that their village and their children will be safe.

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Another thing that I see common in the stories is that when they are burned, typically they are hung, burned, burned.

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Um, or like in the story in Sweden, they were beheaded, um, when they are executed for being a witch.

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Sometimes in a few of the stories that I've come across, the townspeople agreed to leave a horseshoe on their grave.

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This was done, um, this was part of the superstitious.

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practices of the time where they would put a horseshoe on their door or above their door to keep evil spirits out and to keep witches out.

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And if they put a horseshoe on the grave marker of witches, it was kind of like sealing the curse in with the dead witch.

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The witch can no longer curse us from beyond the grave if she has a horseshoe on the grave.

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Now, I find this incredibly funny, but also Not funny.

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That the people accusing these women of witchcraft are using witchcraft to protect themselves from witchcraft.

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As a modern witch myself, if I say, listen, I want some extra protection in my home, I'm going to do something like, oh, I know I'll put a horseshoe above my door.

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That's witchcraft.

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Okay.

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Personally, I have a broom that I leave above my door, my front door all year round.

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It smells of cinnamon.

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Or at least it did when I first put it up there.

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Sometimes I refresh it with some extra cinnamon.

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It keeps pests out, and it also cleanses people's energy as they walk through my door, so that whatever negativity or heaviness that they're bringing in with them, they leave it at the door.

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Um, the Magick is not the broom.

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The Magick is me.

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So here are people, townspeople, Putting Magick into this horseshoe and calling it protection from the witches that they just killed.

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Okay, I don't know.

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Do you find the irony in that? Can you hear that? Can you see that? No, I want to point out at this point in time, because I particularly subscribe to the Welsh witchcraft.

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Celtic witchcraft is my specialty.

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It's where I like And the more I hear about the Welsh culture, the more I love the Welsh people.

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Because in all this talk about witch trials, we can find how many people were killed, executed for witchcraft in England, Scotland, France, Germany, Sweden, um, Italy, all over Europe, in the Americas, in New England.

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This was happening.

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All over.

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But there are very few witch trials on history, on record, in Wales and Ireland.

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And one might have to ask, why? Why, when Wales is so close in proximity to England, Why do they not have their own history of witch trials? And when they do, it's usually English immigrants who came from England and lived in Wales who started their witch trials there.

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And one, one, um, explanation for this might be because of the culture itself.

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So the Irish and the Welsh Celtic people were very superstitious, but they believe in fairies.

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They believe in the fae world.

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They believe in the other world.

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Their mythology and their folklore have a lot to do with stepping into the fae world or those tricky fae, right? And their definition of fairies are far less, um, whimsical and cute as our modern version.

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They're, you know, Definition of fairies were like very tricky people, right? They would be poisoning your cattle.

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They would be, um, killing your crops.

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They would be, um, stealing your babies, you know, things like that.

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Sometimes, sometimes they were just otherworldly people who were fascinating and wonderful and Magickal, but the idea that, uh, that it could be the fae that are doing those kinds of things.

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It turned their attention away from looking at women as witches, and instead of viewing women as a respected, wise, and Magickal person of the area.

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And they would be seen as people who can help you.

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So if you are experiencing something you believe is from the Fae, um, and you need some protection from that, you would go to a witch.

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You would find a Magickal person in your area.

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They didn't have the word witch in Welsh.

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They, um, they would call them something like a swinraig, something that means Magickal woman or wise woman.

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And they would go to that person and they would say, listen, I'm having a little trouble with my fairies.

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Can you help me out? And then they would Produce a concoction, a potion or a spell or a charm or something that would help you.

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And I have to give major props to the Welsh people for that.

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Thank you so much for identifying that women have a place and a role as a leader and as someone who can be turned to for advice and help in matters such as these.

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And these women are were independently wealthy, independently, um, able to take care of themselves because they didn't need a man.

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Um, they didn't need a husband and they didn't need a father to provide for them.

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They provided them for themselves by being the wise knowledge keepers of Magick in their community.

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So they were respected.

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They were respected people in their society.

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And this is a very different view of what we're seeing when we see what happens when women are accused of witchcraft.

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And this is very evident in Welsh mythology.

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There is some medieval texts that they have uncovered of Welsh law, which I love also, which states that, you know, in matters of marriage, when wedding your daughter to, uh, another person, the Welsh law states that she has to give consent.

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And if you look at the Welsh mythology, you can see the proof of that in the story of Bronwyn, the sister of Bron.

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She is married to the King of Ireland, and she has to agree to it.

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It says in the Welsh law, in medieval law texts, that she is not the property of her father or brother, but that she has to consent to the marriage as well.

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So in the story of Bronwyn, she does marry.

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King of Ireland, but he mistreats her.

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He beats her and imprisons her.

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And when Bronn and his brothers and the king of the, um, Welsh Island, they hear of this, they have to go and rescue her and they go to war for her.

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So it starts a war between the island of the mighty and the, and the, um, Irish.

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Um, you can also see this in the story of Blodiwed, even though she was made of a flower to marry Fláil.

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She chooses her own love, which is Granu, and they decide together that they will end Flau's life, but this is because she has not consented to the marriage to Flau.

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So, um, this is just a little snippet of the Welsh mythology, which I'll talk about in other episodes, but I wanted to point that out that Welsh culture has a significantly different view of witchcraft and witches.

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Um, in fact, Caradwyn in their mythology is kind of like their, um, a deity or goddess that is like the witch goddess.

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She brews in her cauldron and she is very much, um, held to a high regard.

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She's very respected in the, in the mythology.

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It's a different culture than what we're seeing from The, um, religious fanatics of the Puritans who came from England.

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Okay.

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So I find it really fascinating that while researching all of this, I just happened to join a book club where we are reading a book called Caliban and the Witch, Women, the Body and the Primitive Accumulation by Silvia Federici.

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In this book, and I have only just begun to read some parts of it.

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They outline a little bit of the culture of emerging capitalism, and I like the way she is.

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It's a very, like, heavy text.

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It's very informational, but it's very well researched, and I just want to quote something that is in the introduction, that when I read it, as I'm researching all of this other stuff, I thought it's very well researched.

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This falls in line perfectly with the answer to the question, why? Why accuse women of witchcraft? Why was this such a big deal? Other than the Puritan religious aspect of, we have to cleanse and purify the earth of all Associations with the devil, the devil is our enemy and all of that.

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In this, um, introduction, she says that she chose the figure of the witch from the Tempest, um, in this volume is placed at the center stage as the embodiment of the world of female subjects that capitalism had to destroy.

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The heretic, the healer, the disobedient wife, the woman who dared to live alone, the Obehe woman who poisoned the master's food and inspired the slaves to revolt.

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So she's claiming here in this text that capitalism could not exist without enslavement, the free labor of people of color or women to, um, To have the society we have currently and that in, in Marx, in Marxism, it's sort of like, um, Mark says, uh, he assumed that the violence that presided over the earliest phases of capitalist expansion would recede with the maturing of capitalist relations.

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But she says in return of the most violent aspects of primitive accumulation has accompanied every phase of capitalist globalization, including the present one, demonstrating that the continuous expulsion of farmers from the land, war and plunder on world scale, and the degradation of women are necessary conditions for the existence of capitalism in all times.

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Now, I want to reiterate some of the reasons that women were accused of witchcraft and if they aren't the reasons why, because a lot of times the reasons why we're totally made up, like the boy down the street is sick, so you must be a witch.

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I want to list some of the reasons I have pulled out of all these witch trial stories Why women are accused or what makes them suspicious.

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of engaging in witchcraft.

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I'm going to list some of these for you right now.

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Openly criticizing someone, being rude, odd, loud, or cursing, having an illegitimate child, having or performing abortions, a knowledge of herbal medicines, wearing clothing that is outside of class or cultural norms, being poor, begging for food or shelter, estate or land disputes, Usually something about inheritance from their father and where that land should go.

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Having no living parents, being old, not attending church services or having legitimate membership in the church, attending church too much, having afflictions and illnesses that end suddenly, taking on a Quaker child after their parents have died.

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That was Rebecca Nurse in the Salem Witch Trials, by the way.

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Having a lover.

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Being from Maine.

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Having an association with another known witch.

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And association could be literally having talked to them once.

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Having ailments.

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Being a widow.

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Having a name.

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Those are not the least of all of the things and reasons why a woman might be accused of witchcraft or being a witch.

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And when we act like something like this could not still happen, You know, we, we act like the people of the 1600s, I mean, they must have been just so stupid.

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They're so superstitious.

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They don't understand how things really work.

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Are we really that much better in our current times? We still engage in capitalism, which means that we still need the free labor of women.

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We need women to be submissive and we need people of color to be submissive because we need them to play their roles in our society in order for capitalism to even work.

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Which is what this book, Caliban and the Witches, is proposing.

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And what about the MacArthur trials during when everyone was accused of communism? That was in the 1940s in America.

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That's modern history.

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People were not allowed to even have a political belief system without being accused of being a traitor to their country.

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And from what I can see, Witch trials and being accused of witchcraft and making that a bad thing, making it look as though you must be evil if you practice witchcraft is a great way to keep people down, to keep people in their place.

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Because from what I can see, most of the people that were accused of witchcraft were actually just women just living their lives.

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literally just trying to make a living or trying to assert themselves in any way or speaking their mind.

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I sit here today calling myself a witch because I do work that I believe is Magickal.

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I help people in so many ways with their emotional health, with their With their physical health, with healing and energy work.

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I do do intuitive card reading, which is just using intuition that everybody has to read someone's, um, fortune or to read their, usually it's reading what they already know about themselves and reiterating or validating what they feel and know.

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And I do want to point out that calling myself a witch may have scared quite a few people off knowing that I live in a place where predominantly Mormon culture society here in Utah.

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And that when I offer to do tarot readings at certain events that my local community live daybreak, um, they consider that to be divisive.

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They will allow people to, um, to play songs and, and do their skills and services as far as like at public events, you can play a guitar and sing a song.

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But if I sit down with a table and I read tarot cards, I'm divisive.

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So I want to end this discussion today, discussion with myself, with you listening.

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With a quote by Paolo Callo, which is, um, the author of The Alchemist.

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This quote, he says, A witch is a woman that is capable of letting her intuition take hold of her actions, that communes with her environment, and that isn't afraid of chasing challenges.

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We're just regular people.

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We're just regular people trying to make a living or trying to make a, make the world better or trying to serve our community if you'll let us.

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And so if you've listened to any of this episode and you're like, what can I do? I want to be an activist for change.

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I don't want capitalism to keep people down.

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And I want to be a catalyst for change in this world by participating in it in a different way.

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Might I suggest a few action points.

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First of all, support your local witches.

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Even if they don't call themselves witches, what they are is they are women trying to make a living and trying to make their way in the world, trying to make an independent income, support them, support their businesses, support mine, book a session with me, book a card reading with me.

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If that's something you're inclined to do, because all I am is someone with gifts and talents that I would like to offer to the world in exchange for an energy in the form of money.

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Yes, but it helps me support myself.

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And that's what we need.

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Women supporting themselves, not women giving free labor.

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Okay.

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Domestic duties at home was a way for the society and in the capitalist movement, when capitalism was coming out of like feudalism, we were creating capitalism, but we needed women to stay at home and do women's work.

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So women have been doing free labor forever.

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And we no longer need to participate in that.

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We deserve wages and money and independence for what we give, for what we offer the world.

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So support a woman in business, support her business and support what she has to offer.

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If you're a woman, I'm going to suggest that you try this.

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There is a movement in place to say women are going to not work on June 24th of this year.

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So it happened in Iceland.

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All of the women in Iceland got together and said, we deserve same pay raises, wages, sorry, same pay wages as men.

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And just to prove our worth, we are going to pick a day where none of us in the whole country are going to work.

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And then they can see what happens when women don't work.

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We're doing that on June 24th.

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So if you have a job.

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When you work, stay home on June 24th, call in sick, whatever you need to do.

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And I realize this is not going to have as big of an impact because teachers are off for the summer anyway, and a lot of women are teachers.

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What would we do without teachers? I guess we'll know when teachers go on strike, right? And I want to offer you this, that there was a period of time in the New Testament around, uh, the time of Jesus when women were creating incantation bowls, and these were prayers and blessings written into bowls that were then used In exchange for money offered to people who needed blessings.

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And these women were making an independent living selling their incantation bowls.

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People were buying them like crazy.

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Incantation bowls made by a woman was found to be far more powerful.

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than the scrolls that the rabbis were selling.

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And they became so popular and they created such an issue for men that they banned them.

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And they even banned women from being able to write at all.

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So keeping women uneducated, keeping wages for men higher than women, these are all really great ways to keep women in the mainstream.

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And whatever the witch trials look like, what they're going to look like in our modern day society, these are some ways that we can help keep that from happening is allow women to have their place in leadership as someone who speaks and other people listen.

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Women tend to hold the emotional burden of our entire society.

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Men aren't talking to other men about their emotional problems, but they will talk to women.

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What are we getting in compensation for that? Right? Some things to think about.

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And if you're interested in more ways to be an activist against these, uh, corrupt, uh, Aspects of capitalism.

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Might I suggest next week's episode, I'm going to talk about being an activist for change by simply self care.

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So I am going to, uh, have another great episode about how to show up in your daily life and, um, and kind of fight the man by just simply having self care and rest.

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All right, witches and wizards, that is our episode today.

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I know it was a bit longer than our typical episode.

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I appreciate you sticking it in there with me because this was a lot of information, but it was all just so fascinating to me.

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I really just couldn't leave anything out.

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And I will post all of the resources for this episode, all of the books and articles that I used to tell these stories on my website, which is prism healing.

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com.

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On that website, you will see at the tab at the top, you will see blog.

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You can see a blog post about every episode that I've had so far on Practically Magick, but you can also see a list of my services that I offer.

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Okay.

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And don't be scared of me because I call myself a witch.

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The work that I am doing is healing work.

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And I would like to offer that to you.

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So please look at my website for information on those services that I offer.

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Reiki healing appointments and emotional processing appointments.

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And of course, I always offer a free 30 minute consultation.

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If you don't know which of my services you need, or you don't need.

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understand what it is I'm offering, or you have questions about that.

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Just give me a call and we'll schedule something where we can discuss those things together.

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Don't forget to look at my events page on my website because I do have a Tarot for Tips event coming up and I have a Healing Through Art workshop at the end of the month.

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I also have a Heart Smart Art workshop for kids and parents, which is an emotional Intelligence workshop using art to help kids with their emotional healing and their emotional awareness.

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And as always, I want you to private message me with any questions that you have.

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You might be featured on my episodes.

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As a question from a listener, if you have any questions about Magick healing and energy work, you might be able to private message me on my website or on my Instagram, Prism underscore healing or on Facebook, Courtney Pearl and my Facebook page, Courtney Pearl's Prism Healing.

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So look for that.

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I'm very excited to hear from you.

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And especially if you have any comments or questions about this episode in particular, I would love to hear it or just pop on and say hi.

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I would like to thank Alan Menke for producing some of my favorite podcasts ever and where I got a lot of inspiration for this episode.

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Makes the lore podcast and unobscured.

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I would like to thank Just Blane at Ride the Wave Media and host of Radio Daybreak who produces my episodes and who gives me a lot of inspiration and ideas on what I'm going to talk about next.

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And I would like to thank Sarah at Daybreak Treasures Boutique for featuring me as an artist and sponsoring my workshops and events.

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Go make Magick, witches and wizards, and I will see you next time.