Looking for some October magic? Below I’ve included two rituals — one a Santa Muerte rebirth ritual dreamed up by Leza Cantoral (witch, author, and editor of Clash Books) and published in Light Magic for Dark Times and one a tarot writing practice from The Magical Writing Grimoire.
Over the past several years as Doughty, has continued to travel the world to give talks and educate folks on the wonders of death, she found that her favorite part of these talks came in the Q&A portion. It was not just the opportunity to get to hear what she calls “people’s deep fascination with decaying bodies, head wounds, bones, embalming, funeral pyres—the works”—that the most direct and provocative questions about death came from young children.
Stephanie Valente lives in Brooklyn, NY. She has published Hotel Ghost (Bottlecap Press, 2015) and waiting for the end of the world (Bottlecap Press, 2017) and has work included in Susan, TL;DR, and Cosmonauts Avenue. Sometimes, she feels human. http://stephanievalente.com
Pixabay
It is three a.m. My room is dark. I don’t move, barely breathe. What caused me to wake? When I glance at the red numbers glaring at me from the clock, I see her. A woman is standing in the corner of my room. I try to keep myself together. I don’t want it known that I’ve seen her. But I am too late. She knows.
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I felt conflicted. Conflicted by my exhilaration for the impending tour and the museum’s haunting artifacts and, yet, simultaneously distressed by the fetishization (both my own and owner’s) of relics of tragedy.
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American Horror Story: Asylum
It’s an ugly truth, but we enjoy visiting places where people have suffered or where horrible things have happened. There is something about a place with a bad reputation that sucks us in, crowds our imaginations, and almost energizes us. For me, Letchworth was that place.
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Aëla Labbé
The woman who works in the office points out where Anna and Mildred walked together, where Mildred pulled out a pistol and shot Anna, then herself, because of a man named Jack. Mildred survived, went to the asylum in Waterbury, where she stayed until her family took her away. Anna died, not in the tower where both the women are standing now, but in the field. The woman who does not work in the office asks the woman who does why Anna would be here. "I don't know," says the woman who works in the office. And then, "I don't think she's here." And then, "I don't know why she would be."
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When I was nine, my mother, grandmother, and I moved into an old Victorian house in a neighborhood full of old Victorian houses.
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