Missing Witches

Risa Dickens + Amy Torok
Missing Witches

Missing Witches is a research-based, feminist, occult storytelling project. We go looking for the witches we've been missing.

  1. MW Polvo de Gallina Negra - Art To Alter Reality

    OCT 28

    MW Polvo de Gallina Negra - Art To Alter Reality

    Today, I’m adding Black Hen Powder, Polvo de Gallina Negra, to our shared apothecary, to our botanica of story spells we can conjure when we need a boost of magical, creative inspiration. I offer up Polvo de Gallina Negra, a feminist art collective from 1980s Mexico, sometimes hailed as the first feminist art group in Mexico, who used magic, laughter, intellect and art to change the world. In 1983, in the streets of Mexico City, two witches whose craft was forged in the kiln of art and resistance, and honed on an anvil of humour and politics, or perhaps due to their focus on domestic labour, I should say, baked in the oven and smoothed on the ironing board…Mónica Mayer and Maris Bustamante, cast a feminist spell. Their chosen magic was social subversion through performance, using art as a tool to hex the patriarchy. Named after a Mexican folk remedy to ward off evil, Polvo de Gallina Negra made art with the same intention: to protect, to awaken, to empower and enact the ancient alchemy of rebellion. The Witchcraft of Protection takes many forms. “The name Polvo de Gallina Negra translates to “black hen powder”, a traditional remedy used as protection against the evil eye, which [Mónica and Maris] anticipated they would receive in relation to the feminist content of their work. The group outlined three key goals they wished to achieve: “(1) To analyze women’s images in art and in the media, (2) to study and to promote the participation of women in art, and (3) to create images based on our experience as women in a patriarchal system, with a feminist perspective and with the goal of transforming the visual world in order to alter reality.” Black Hen Powder, a folk magic tool with origins in Mexican brujería and Southern hoodoo traditions, is typically used for protection, cleansing, and reversing negativity. It is named for its association with black hens, egg-laying creatures often regarded in magical practices as symbols of defense and transformative energy. And Polvo became this magic personified.

    29 min
  2. MW Simone Weil - Finding Love In The Void

    OCT 21

    MW Simone Weil - Finding Love In The Void

    Anarchist, philosopher, mystic, revolutionary. I’ve seen many exciting words used to draw the portrait of Simone Weil. But the moment I read her described as “the patron saint of all outsiders,” by André Gide, I knew I needed to add Simone Weil to the Missing Witches pantheon of witches, weirdos, mystics, imagineers and imperfect rebels. I knew I needed to read her work. Simone wrote, ““Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.” So let’s pay attention to Simone today, in this space between our ears, bestow upon her story that rare and pure form of generosity that is the currency of modernity. Today, let’s give her our attention. This mystic philosopher lived her life as an offering to the suffering of others, an embodiment of radical compassion. She didn’t just speak on justice; she, in her way, became it. She entered the factories, breaking her body to feel the pain of the workers. Her hands blistered as she wrote of oppression, each word dripping with the weight of lived experience. Simone saw beyond the illusions of power, piercing the veil of comfort with a fierce devotion to the downtrodden. She fed her soul with hunger, fasting in solidarity with the oppressed, her body a vessel for their grief. Her altruism was magic woven through action, a spell cast for liberation. She refused the safety of distance, of intellectualism without skin in the game. Simone called out to the divine - her life a chant of solidarity with the most invisible among us. Her life, like yours and mine, was a magical dance with contradictions—an ascetic who craved the world's pain, a revolutionary who sought God in every breath. Contradictions that belied a supreme, singular focus and singular goal. The Truth. But as we’ve discovered in our own lives, dear Coven, real Truth is never simple. Simplicity is never simple.

    27 min
4.8
out of 5
250 Ratings

About

Missing Witches is a research-based, feminist, occult storytelling project. We go looking for the witches we've been missing.

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