In the Circle with Mars and Venus: Show Preview from Stella Speaks, March 22, 2023

 You're listening to Stella Speaks, a podcast for witches and bitches about what I call bitchcraft. We throw feminism, witchcraft, social justice, and profanity into the cauldron. I hope you stay for a spell.

Today's episode is dedicated to setting intentions and boundaries for our upcoming season in the spring of 2023. It is a warm welcome for new and returning listeners to get caught up on the direction the podcast is taking and to preview the upcoming season. It serves as a welcome and almost an FAQ to orient you to what the fuck is going in Stella Speaks. Welcome and merry meet! I don't typically time stamp the podcast in the show notes, but I will today, so check the description of the show in your podcast listening service to navigate that way if you choose.

First, I am going to begin with a somewhat long land acknowledgement. My relationship to the land and her indigenous stewards has changed since I moved. I now live in the occupied ancestral lands of the Erie, Kaskaskia, and Mississauga people here in northeast Ohio. Ohio is an Iroquoian word that the Seneca used for the Ohio River--ohiyo-- which means "it is beautiful" and is often translated, correctly or not, to "beautiful waters," and Ohio definitely has gorgeous waters in the form of lakes, rivers, ponds, and precipitation. I live near Lake Erie, which was named for the Erie people who were also referred to as "Cat Nation." That translation is often thought to mean racoons not wildcats. My relationship to people who were indigenous to this area is definitely evolving. I am continuing to learn the history of the land I now occupy and learning to listen to what I can do to support indigenous rights and efforts toward land back, a movement to return sovereignty and stewardship to the people who are indigenous to what some call Turtle Island, which can refer to Earth or more specifically what we settlers call "North America" and includes Central America in some visions and definitions. I'm working to get into right relationship with these people and with the land, and my efforts are small. Right now, for transparency and accountability, I'll briefly mention my own efforts toward healing. I am participating in decolonization work by examining my reading, my ancestry, and my spending. I am taking classes on decolonizing, reading a lot, and learning what I can. This will be a lifelong project, and the more I learn, the more I realize that I still have to learn.  This topic deserves its own podcast episode, and I will record one eventually, but I have more work to do and would like to invite indigenous folx and other people of the global majority impacted by white supremacy and colonization before I am even close to having what Desiree Stephens would call "depth and range."

Next, I am going to acknowledge my spiritual path and its roots. When I began my studies of witchcraft and bitchcraft, I came through 90s pop Wicca like Silver Ravenwolf and Scott Cunningham, reading whatever I could in secret because my parents were conservative Catholics and my dad worked for the church in youth ministry as I was discovering the Craft. I then strayed away for a bit during my college years and then returned wholeheartedly in my twenties through Starhawk's work and Unitarian Universalist Pagan groups. A few members of our public Pagan group formed a coven rather spontaneously September of 2015. I am still a member, and it has evolved into an important part of my life. Soon after that coven formed and I was taking such an active role in the public UU Pagan group, I attended a lot of local witchy and Pagan public rituals. I went to a local Gardnerian coven's open circles and took an initiation in 2017 and a second degree elevation in 2018. I left the group on bad terms with a lot of hard feelings on both sides in 2020, and I am fully committed to only deeply participating in non-hierarchical Pagan groups that share my values of social justice. On the positive side, I will say that they profoundly affected my knowledge and execution of ritual mechanics and we cared about each other deeply. To honor my own value of authenticity, I will also say that the group dynamics were a toxic shitshow, and I sometimes regret ever being a part of it except that one of my dearest friends in the world there, and we both left and thrived in groups with better leadership and values that align with our own better. Leaving that coven was more painful than my divorce, and it still bothers me today in 2023.