This episode looks at various harvest festivals, including Michaelmas, Mid-Autumn Festival, and Thanksgiving. It includes poems, songs, stories, and a pair of essays. Enjoy!
Summary
This episode features a special one-hour interview with the cast of Conjure Crossroads, discussing the state of conjure in the US. We’ll hear about art, magic, New Orleans, and what conjure looks like today among current practitioners.
A beautiful and gentle film about living with magical companions is Hiyao Miyazaki’s My Neighbor Totoro. You can see a (shaky) clip of the “umbrella dance” I mentioned here.
Laine didn’t mention it, but her magical childhood was heavily influenced by F. H. Burnett’s The Secret Garden.
There are some great magical & craft-based children’s activity ideas in the Waldorf educational style found at the blog Alina’s Adventures in Homemaking.
I would definitely recommend scouting as a good introduction to nature & wonder for kids. Check out Spiral Scouts, the Pagan-friendly scouting group, or the more mainstream alternatives of the Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts of America.
And of course, Laine takes much parenting inspiration from the aunts in Practical Magic.
Tonight we’re looking at the concept of “magical Catholicism,” or folk magic using Catholic symbols. We’ll have a couple of saint stories, a brief history of the traditions, and a bevy of practical applications.
(All of these can be easily found by navigating to the “Magical Systems” resource page of the NWW site, then looking at the subheadings of ‘Curanderismo & Brujeria’ and ‘Other Magical Systems’)
I didn’t mention it in the episode, but I’d HIGHLY recommend the new release The Conjure Workbook: Working the Root, vol.1, by Starr Casas—it’s conjure and rootwork, but heavily influenced by the author’s Catholicism and very useful stuff, to boot!
The site fisheaters.com which has several pieces of information that veer towards the esoteric which are worth checking out (such as “St. Anthony’s Brief” or “Holy Oils”) [A warning: this site is very traditional, and thus its viewpoints may be controversial; browse at your own risk]
I would highly recommend the Library Page of the Curious Curandera website, where you’ll find a number of free titles on magical Catholicism, including “How to Pray the Rosary,” “Saints and their Patronage,” and “Prayers for Different Needs.” There are a few (very good) pay titles, too, but it’s hard to beat the wonderful free texts. Her courses are marvelous, too!