Lucile Scott - An American Covenant: A Story of Women, Mysticism, and the Making of Modern America

Text copyright 2020 by Lucile Scott

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

Published by TOPPLE Books & Little A, New York

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ISBN-13: 9781542091275 (hardcover)

ISBN-10: 1542091276 (hardcover)

ISBN-13: 9781542091299 (paperback)

ISBN-10: 1542091292 (paperback)

Cover design by Zoe Norvell

First edition

For the girl on the stairs.

CONTENTS

We are told in 1 Samuel 15:23, Rebellion is as the sin of Witchcraft.

Cotton Mather, Massachusetts, 1693

A NOTE FROM TOPPLE BOOKS

W hen the patriarchys suffocating grip has tightened around us, women have found a way to persist. In An American Covenant, journalist Lucile Scott conjures a journey into the past, exploring the way witches, healers, and diviners have created powerful paths forward, despite the insistence that their work and lives were dangerous, frivolous, or heretical.

As our collective rage rose up amid the Womens March and #MeToo, Scott found herself drawn to mystic traditions as a path toward understanding the history of feminist resistance. As she investigated, a clear trend emerged: women have been harnessing their own control since the dawn of time, altering the course of their lives, and helping shape this countrys future.

In this perfect addition to our TOPPLE Books imprint, Lucile battles the oppressive heritage of patriarchal society, gathering her own historical coven of radical women who have persevered throughout the ages. By tapping into the powerful, complicated stories of Marie Laveau, Cora L. V. Scott, Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, Zsuzsanna Budapest, and Marianne Williamson, Scott shatters the masculine lenses of history that have gazed upon these women and so many others. In AnAmerican Covenant, heroines pass on their long legacy of courage, queerness, and defiance, inspiring us to bring our own transformational magic to the revolution.

Joey Soloway, TOPPLE Books editor-at-large

THE COVEN

W e proclaim Jesus Christ Lord over Brooklyn, boomed a plastic megaphone in the night. Were not here for Brett Kavanaugh; were here for your soul.

Lavetur in nobis sanguis tyrranus (We bathe in the blood of tyrants), we thirty ensconced inside a candlelit converted Brooklyn garage chanted back in unison.

Despite the multiple phoned-in death threats and the mob of protestors just outside vastly outnumbering us, we then followed the lead of Dakota, our red-mohawked high-priestx, and calmly prepared to hex Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh. We arranged our Kavanaugh poppets for cursing in effigy, placing them on the altar beneath the thickening incense and sage smoke licking at a goat skull, a few white penis candles run through with coffin nails, and a jar of piss and graveyard dirt that had charged under a full moon. Dakota told us that tonight, we would channel our collective rage toward the justice denied us elsewhere. Tonight, we would feel power despite a government that had dedicated itself to stripping usthe female, the queer, the brownof it. We would touch the spark deep within that we needed to keep up the fight for however long it took to win it, or so Dakota said.

Meanwhile, thanks to online news reports, I knew that a different group of Christian soldiers based in California was diligently performing a counter-exorcism to protect the eternal soul of the aforementioned justice, sworn into office two weeks prior despite allegations of sexual assault and perjury. I imagined an outpost somewhere in the dust-swept rural interior of the state, where a smattering of desert Holy Rollers clustered in front of a TV mounted at the edge of their exorcism circle to watch the live scene outside this occult shopbrought to them by the ample right-wing media presence that had joined the sidewalk swarm. Perhaps theyd even broadcast a shot of my face, grimacing at the camera that had been shoved into it as Id entered the shop. I pictured I came with a caption, Brooklyn Witch or maybe Satans Minion, New York City. Then I smiled.

One highly disconcerting aspect about living in America during fall 2018 was that every day on the street everything seemed so normal. People walking through busy intersections contentedly texting, people petting rescue dogs, people drinking CBD-infused slow-drip coffee as they talked about Tinder dates. Life went on. In the end, a slow slide toward authoritarian rule didnt feel Orwellian at all.

Still, despite the external banality, I felt some constantly raging cosmic battle of good v. evil, light v. dark, freedom v. controllike in Lord of the Rings or Harry Potter or World War IIswirling just beyond sight. That night, at that ritual, the clash somehow manifested before me, poof. Given, each side disagreed on whod been cast in which role, but we all concurred on the celestial stakes. And living, actually walking into that unseeable space in the in-between, well, that felt magic.

This is a story about the liminal, where real v. fake, belief v. disbelief, and other earthbound binaries do not apply. This is a story about America and five mystic women who transformed itthough by and large weve forgotten their names. This is also a story about a slight, blonde lesbian in her midthirties trying to parse a way through both her personal and cosmic chaosme.

The Salem witch trials of 1692 inextricably linked theology, gender, and control in the cultural fabric of our burgeoning nation. Yet despite the best efforts of those seminal Puritan purges, the mystic has persisted in America, an ever-present flow just beneath the surface of the national psyche. And from time to time, like the bubbles of a cauldron, that constant undercurrent has erupted into the cultural mainstream.

Those surges usually occur at, and underscore, pivotal moments in the fight for liberty that define our better angels in Americaespecially during each feminist wave. In fact, women have often been the de facto heads of these more or less headless movements. But though this clear historical pattern exists, most Americans dont know about the feminist mystics role in our cultural and political battles. Like reflex, the mainstream order has consistently and quickly dubbed these movements the province of the weak and muddleheadedof womenthen ground them down to a spectral footnote or punch line.

In the 20-teens, one day no one was talking about witches. The next, we feminists casting to #HexThePatriarchy had bubbled up everywhereat least in candlelit converted Brooklyn garages and on Instagram. Statistically speaking, approximately 1.5 million Americans identified as Wiccan or Pagan,especially when corporate entities attempted to cash in. Sephora, for one, announced the planned launch of a Starter Witch Kit that it quickly canceled after throngs of DIY, small businessoriented #witches focused their online evil eye its way.

Prior to that witchy moment, the mystic and I had developed a touch-and-go relationship. I first felt her lunar pull as a Kentucky teenager, removing an old leather-bound Wiccan tome from beneath my friend Beths flower-duvet-covered bed. I further submerged myself in my early twenties while basking in the glitter of urban queer culture for the very first time. Back then, my enthusiastic chatter about visiting my Intuitive Reader or the power of candle magic often elicited a slight shunning, a repulsion, but also a titillated sort of curiosity, from my usually female conversation matesmuch as if Id just shown the person porn. But over the years, Id slowly, then completely, moved away from all things mystic. Then the winds of the zeitgeist shifted circa 2016, and I was not immune. I found myself drawn back into the liminals embrace.