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
Roberto Tumini
"If you tell anyone about any of this, they won't believe you. I did the same thing to another girl last year. When she went to the principal, he didn't believe her either. She was nasty like you, and that guy knows I can do much better."
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Aela Labbe
I just turned 40. Everyone said this is the year I would feel liberated and alive. I was recently divorced from a physically abusive man and was starting a new and exciting life for myself…until I got knocked up by a much younger man.
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Aela Labbe
LB 3251 [PLAYGROUNDS (SCHOOL)]: Lower lip, two white lines. The first time, I fell off a slide. The second time, a boy named Anthony pushed me off a preschool jungle gym because he said I was in his way. For the record, Anthony, I wasn’t. Both times, I went to the hospital for stitches and my mother held me down.
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I’m saying this loudly. I’m saying this loudly because it needs to be said. When I was in college, I was raped. I wasn’t even 21 yet. As if being raped—and finally realizing I had actually been raped—I also realized something else in that month. I was pregnant. I became pregnant. My body was not my own. A man had claimed it, and now, there was a baby.
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I had an abortion some 16 ½ years ago. The climate was very different then: the anti-abortion movement was more fringe and radical, with less mainstream proselytizing, even here in Indiana. The protesters at the clinic numbered in the single digits, and they were confined to an area behind a chain-link fence that stood the entire building’s length from the patient parking lot and entrance. Their chant was audible, but not enough for me to make out the words.
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