#55 - Rachel Pollack, Tarot Titan and Radical Writer

Explicit content warning

06/24/20 • 82 min

Season Finale! Rachel Pollack is a legend who is perhaps best known as one of the world’s foremost tarot experts, having written such classics as Seventy Eight Degrees of Wisdom and The New Tarot Handbook. She’s also the creator of The Shining Tribe Tarot and co-creator with Robert Place of The Burning Serpent Oracle and the Raziel Deck.

But tarot is just of tip of the iceberg, as she is the author of 43 books of fiction and non-fiction, many of them in the speculative or sci-fi genres, including Unquenchable Fire which won the Arthur C. Clarke Award, and Godmother Night, which won the World Fantasy Award. She is also an accomplished comic book writer and pioneer, and during her run for DC Comics’ Doom Patrol in the 1990s, she introduced one of the world’s first transgender superheroes - and is now considered by many to be a transgender superhero herself.

Rachel’s work has been translated into 16 languages, and she has taught and lectured on tarot, creative writing, gender, and innumerable other topics in the U.S. Canada, Europe, the UK, Australia, New Zealand, and China. And until her retirement, she was a senior faculty member of Goddard College’s MFA in Writing program.

Rachel’s most recent book is The Beatrix Gates, a volume which collects several of her most visionary stories as well as a brand new essay on magic and transgender living. This year it was nominated for a Lambda Award.

One can see why poet Cat Fitzpatrick called Rachel “a living national treasure.”

On this episode, Rachel discusses the relationship between tarot and comic books, the importance of visionary transgender storytelling, and why her religion is Heresy.

Pam also speaks about following magical clues long term, and answers a listener question about practicing fire magic in the home.

Our sponsors for this episode are Clarissa Eck Pottery, Max Razdow’s Mage Cards on Kickstarter, BetterHelp, and Clever Kim’s Curios

One can see why poet Cat Fitzpatrick called Rachel “a living national treasure.”

On this episode, Rachel discusses the relationship between tarot and comic books, the importance of visionary transgender storytelling, and why her religion is Heresy.

Pam also speaks about following magical clues long term, and answers a listener question about practicing fire magic in the home.

Our sponsors for this episode are Clarissa Eck Pottery, Max Razdow’s Mage Cards on Kickstarter, BetterHelp, and Clever Kim’s Curios

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#54 - Brooklynn, Sonic Spellcaster

Brooklynn is an Atlanta-based singer, songwriter, and producer who makes magical pop music. Her latest album, My Shadow and I, is an introspective excavation of her multidimensional identity as a queer, black woman and witch.

She is also an accomplished visual artist and designer, who runs the online shop Bébé Vaudou, which carries her jewelry and clothing line and other mystical merch, including her viral WITCHES AGAINST WHITE SUPREMACY t-shirts, posters, and stickers. And she is donating 100% of the profits of the WITCHES AGAINST WHITE SUPREMACY collection to Buy From A Black Woman, a non-profit which supports black woman business owners. Brooklynn also hosts the Witches of Atlanta podcast, where she speaks with local witches about spiritual practice, economics, and culture.

On this episode, Brooklynn speaks about art as activism, music as spellcraft, and how we can best support the black community during the current protests and beyond.

Pam also speaks about antiracism as spiritual work (including reading Anchor & Star’s zines about whiteness, cultural appropriation, and paganism), and answers a listener question about techno witches.and how we can best support the black community during the current protests and beyond.

Pam also speaks about antiracism as spiritual work, and answers a listener question about techno witches.

Our sponsors for this episode are the Magic And Realism Jungian Archetypal Dream Journal and BetterHelp

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$undefined - #56 - Camille Rose Garcia, Dark Artist of Refracted Fairy Tales$

#56 - Camille Rose Garcia, Dark Artist of Refracted Fairy Tales

Welcome to Season 4! Camille Rose Garcia is a world renowned painter, illustrator, and author whose work is steeped in warped fairy tales and (super)natural magic. The child of a Mexican activist filmmaker father and a muralist/painter mother, she apprenticed at age 14 working on murals with her mother while growing up in the suburbs of Orange County, visiting Disneyland, and going to punk shows with the other disenchanted youth of that era.

Her fine art has been displayed internationally and featured in numerous magazines including Juxtapoz, Rolling Stone, and Modern Painter, and is included in the collections of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, The Resnick Collection, and the San Jose Museum of Art, which held a retrospective of her work, entitled Tragic Kingdom, accompanied by a catalog of the same name. Garcia’s book, The Illustrated Alice in Wonderland (Harper Collins) was a New York Times Bestseller, and she has also illustrated such classics as Snow White and Cinderella. Her latest book, The Cabinet of Dr. Deekay, a surrealist fairy tale she wrote and illustrated, is out now from Sympathetic Press. She currently lives in woods of the Pacific Northwest.

On this episode, Camille discusses how she came to be a painter of the dark feminine, the power of subverting fairy tales, and the vivid magic that comes with being an art witch in the woods.

Pam also speaks about the autumn and underworld stories, and answers a listener question about how to engage in shadow work.

Our sponsors for this episode are Clarissa Eck Ceramics, The Modern Witches Confluence, and BetterHelp.