Risa Dickens - Missing Witches

Copyright 2021 by Risa Dickens and Amy Torok. All rights reserved. No portion of this book, except for brief review, may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any meanselectronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwisewithout the written permission of the publisher. For information contact North Atlantic Books.

Published by

North Atlantic Books

Berkeley, California

Cover art gettyimages.com/Arina-Ulyasheva

Cover design by Jasmine Hromjak

Interior design by Happenstance Type-O-Rama

Missing Witches: Recovering True Histories of Feminist Magic is sponsored and published by the Society for the Study of Native Arts and Sciences (dba North Atlantic Books), an educational nonprofit based in Berkeley, California, that collaborates with partners to develop cross-cultural perspectives, nurture holistic views of art, science, the humanities, and healing, and seed personal and global transformation by publishing work on the relationship of body, spirit, and nature.

North Atlantic Books publications are available through most bookstores. For further information, visit our website at www.northatlanticbooks.com or call 800-733-3000.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Dickens, Risa, 1980- author. | Torok, Amy, 1977- author.

Title: Missing witches : recovering true histories of feminist magic / Risa

Dickens and Amy Torok ; foreword by Amanda Yates Garcia.

Description: Berkeley, California : North Atlantic Books, [2021] | Includes

bibliographical references and index. | Summary: A guide to

invocations, rituals, and histories at the intersection of magic and

feminism, as informed by historys witchesand the sociopolitical

culture that gave rise to themProvided by publisher.

Identifiers: LCCN 2020032805 (print) | LCCN 2020032806 (ebook) | ISBN

9781623175726 (paperback) | ISBN 9781623175733 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: Wicca. | WitchesBiography. | Witchcraft. | Feminism. |

Magic.

Classification: LCC BP605.W53 D43 2021 (print) | LCC BP605.W53 (ebook) |

DDC 299/.94dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020032805

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020032806

This book includes recycled material and material from well-managed forests. North Atlantic Books is committed to the protection of our environment. We print on recycled paper whenever possible and partner with printers who strive to use environmentally responsible practices.

This book is dedicated to the Witches within. To our ancestors, parents and stepparents, our families, chosen families, our partners, helpers, teachers, and loves. To May Marigold, a magical future, and to all those who go looking.

We thank Lily Miller and Gillian Hamel of North Atlantic Books.

We thank every one of the Witches weve had the honor to interview and learn from.

We thank Amanda and Sandra for offering their words to this circle.

We thank our podcast listeners and patrons, the Missing Witches Coven, who make us feel like what we have to say is worth hearing. This magic book would not exist without you.

A Witch recognizes another Witch. That conspiratorial glance across the boardroom; the student with the snake ring who always gives the feminist critique; the jogger who stops to clear the trash tangled in the mugwort leaves. We Witches see each other. A spark passes between us, neurons firing, DNA lighting up, spiraling back through our lineages, back to the first Witches who danced in the woods and spoke their spells into their boiling cauldrons. Even if we dont know their names, we can feel them, our kinfolk. Even when, as with many contemporary Witches, our cauldrons are cups of to-go coffee that we grab on our way to work, or baby formula heated on an electric stove, or the ceramic cup on our dresseran altar so subtle we are the only ones who know. This world can be a hostile place for a Witch, and in our most desperate moments, when we start to lose our faith in the goodness of the world or our gumption to change it, catching the eye of another Witch can restore our power and help us remember that were not alone. Yet when we read this book in our hands, were not just catching the eye of other Witches, were dancing with them, were flying with them through the night and across time, wing to wing. In this book, we meet our Witch ancestors. Our sisters, our cousins. Here in Missing Witches, even if we already have them (but especially if we dont), we meet the Witch friends we always wanted and find the coven we always wish we had.

The work of Witches is ancestral work. This book is an ancestral book. Many of us have been told that Witches dont exist, even though we knew in our hearts we were one. Its a special kind of erasure to be told that the thing you know you are does not exist. But Witches are real. We exist, and this book shows that we come from a long and powerful tradition. Here we meet a refreshingly diverse coterie of witches, drawing from the powerful magic of women from Sweden to Colombia, from the deserts of Mexico to the brownstones of Harlem. Mara Sabina, Zora Neale Hurston, Monica Sj. The authors include themselves in this brew, mixing their stories with the stories of our Witch grandmothers, showing us how all our stories combine. We make medicine from poison, Art out of grief, grab calm from inside a storm, the authors say. This work is devotional work. Amy and Risa assembled scraps of heirloom fabric into quilts, pored over documents in libraries, sifted through the graveyard dirt, and reeled and recovered from their own Witch wounds to bring us this book. In it they speak about their anxiety, their broken hearts, the births and deaths, and everything in betweenbecause this book is about the human experience of being a Witch. One of the things I love best about Witches is that they are magical and human at the same time. Witches are magic living in this world in human form.

And heres something else I love: the authors commitment to telling the truth and their willingness to embrace ambiguity. We dont have to pretend that all our Witch ancestors were saints (though a few might have been burned by them). We commit, the authors say, to telling true stories, and where we dont know, to resist wrapping up our stories in nice bows. When we reach ambiguous spaces, lets keep what we can from the warrior Witches who kept seeds, preserved languages, fought for land and soil and body and soul and equality and justice, but lets not neglect to face the ugly stuff. In this book, we get to gaze into the faces of our Witch ancestors, to see all the holy mess of who they were, and... the holy mess of who WE are, and come to love ourselves, warts and all.

Remembering that to love is also to be humble. To be willing to be vulnerable and face our flaws. I appreciate the authors willingness to unpack their own biases and blind spots here, to look at racism and internalized sexism and colonialism and continue the work of unsettling. Because Witch work is anti-racist work. And anti-racist work is anti-capitalist work. And in a way, the inquisitors of Old Europe were right: Witches want to bring this whole monstrous system down. We wont stop until we do. And part of that work of unsettling and dismantling is recognizing what is ours and what is not. We should not take what is not ours. Simultaneously, we need to honor the work and practices of Witches from all cultures and backgrounds.

The authors dont give us easy answers for how to move forwardor any answersbut they do help us ask the right questions about what belongs to us and what doesnt, and how to honor our histories without pretending problems dont exist.