” To all of them—who proudly say, “We are the granddaughters of all the witches you could not burn,” “somos las nietas de todas las brujas que no pudiste quemar,” as the popular chant goes— this book is dedicated.” Silvia Federici in the introduction to Witches, Witch-Hunting, and Women, © PM Press 2018.
Today I celebrate one exact year to the week when I started posting on Substack! I feel wonderful and a bit afraid, with the trickster emerging in me, to have pulled it off… As I said then:
“Semilinear prose is my newer search to invent how to say what needs to be said out loud, with my words and with photography, the sideline I re-discovered, late in life, to help me remember what is repeatedly and continuously forgotten. It is all about remembering, I guess. And about dreams… It is also about community and relationship… things I need to learn much more about...”
https://ericaweick.substack.com/p/semilinear-prose
I thank all of you who have read me, who shared and left comments on my pages. My writing is a lonely discovery in paradox mostly, and so, the bits and pieces of response energize me, always. I am not quite comfortable in a world of what is called automatic social media…of likes and dislikes. I am rather more inclined to love readers who read, instead of write, who stay private, and folks who dream instead of telling me what to do with my dreams…it is and continues to be a very tricky business…living, loving and writing are all strange states…
The year of 2013?? (2023??) 1was filled with difficult revelations, when I confirmed what I already knew well – men are the authors of most important texts. Women have navigated around male text for ages. Very simple reality, and yet a most difficult concept for folks to get! It seems to me.
No, I am not only referring to research, re-writes, adaptations, answers, translations or restacks of male words. I am referring rather to a concept that continues to place female as a subset of reality, in a male world. Shocking for me to discover that Gilles Deleuze refers to the woman as a becoming, an inhabitant of the minorities. I agree with him and understand him not ever completely, but the warrior in me is still reeling and feeling remnants of very real anger.
So, still within this spirit, a writing I never quite understood where it came from. It comes from some place inside that anger of forever becoming and not ever being able to be…
“The beast with two backs or the paradox of consciousness” no, not quite consciousness is not a beast nor a choice nor a paradox nor a letting go nor a surrender “pecado de omissão” the “sin of omission” as a judgement and the worse possible state of consciousness. as a child, i was conscious. as a cell, i was conscious. as a pebble at the bottom of the creek, as a barnacle, as a worm, as a seed inside the belly of a bird, as an acid bath, as an abort, as a woman, as a daughter as an ostracized friend as a son, as a father, as a killer, as a builder, as a dreamer at war and in peace I was conscious. 2010
What I learned this past year, though, too, was to call on my internal built in kindness into more active being, once again, and to tell the mischievous powerful trickster to give me a break!
Yet, still for one day, and in celebration, he is back, dressed in full kokopeli regalia, as a clown, and he is interested in talking about witch hunts, witches and magic!
So enjoy a take on Silvia Federici’s book The Witch Trials and the Rise of Modernity and Capitalism - Sylvia Federici - Caliban and the Witch,
on Esoterica.
Women were systematically killed because they owned property... and that is a new idea, for me. I never quite zeroed in on the historical property angle.
And they were also killed because they knew about Magic, of course! Weeds are actually good for you, they told you! They may even deter conception…
Another take on the same, by my new favorite podcaster, a man who is a woman, or, in modern language, a cis person, on Philosophy Tube. He/she compares the witch hunts to the lynchings in America. Historically, a comparison between the 15, 16th hundreds and the 20th century…
Enjoy the full moon, when Pluto navigates back into Aquarius… to stay for a while! and no, I am not exactly into astrology. Haha. I am just a mere believer in miracles!! And I do like this guy’s talk – and the notion that we are re-entering a place/space/time/boundary/breathing layer of loving connection with what we may no longer know but may well be able to remember…
"Beyond the Individual": The FULL MOON at 05°15' Leo, Thursday, January 25, 2024, 17:55 UTC
And a quiet joyful shout to a friend, Tom Cheetham, in As Variously as possible, for leading me to Substack (he may not know he did it), and for his wonderful assemblies and dis-assemblies of world views, ontologies of music and heart felt ways to thought.
Wow! It took me two days to catch the ten year gap! I will try to remember more about the the 2013 year…
So interesting, Erica, and sobering. I love the idea of re-entry into connection, and of remembering what we may not know but yet remember. Happy birthday!!
Thanks Erica, for the thanks! You know I know nothing of Deleuze, so I don’t know what he meant by that. But I think we could take the idea of women as always “becoming” as high praise - I think perhaps that is very much what I would like to be - ever becoming... In any case, you make me think, as always, and that’s wonderful...