Weaving through Collapse with Carmen Spagnola

Use this link to send us thoughts or questions!

The Weaving the Future Podcast aims to foster conversation and tangible insights on how we can live and work in ways that are aligned, sacred, equitable and joyful.

Carmen Spagnola is a Le Cordon Bleu-trained chef turned trauma recovery practitioner, clinical hypnotherapist, and kitchen witch. She is author of Spells for the Apocalypse: Practical Magic for Turbulent Times (2025) and The Spirited Kitchen: Recipes & Rituals for the Wheel of the Year (2022). Carmen is host of The Numinous Podcast, and founder of The Numinous Network, an online learning and support portal for people healing from trauma through a cross-pollination of somatics, attachment, and nature-based spirituality. As a chef, author, and facilitator, Carmen holds space for renewal amidst turmoil. Her work is an invitation to re-enchantment, soul nourishment, and a deeper and more animistic relationship to the natural world. She provides frameworks and skills to create cultures of collective care in precarious times.

Carmen is a big proponent of “Collapse Awareness”, particularly living a deeply satisfying life in the face of chaotic times. An overarching question we dive into in this episode is exploring whether there is a tension between being “collapsitarian” perspectives and the work of weaving change within existing systems, and the place for hope or vision within that.

We also dive into what it is like for both her and I to be living right now, where we are situated and what we are grappling with right now. This includes some discussion on how to draw on Carmen’s brand new book Spells for the Apocalypse: Practical Magic for Turbulent Times. She describes this book as a trauma-informed witchcraft book that is gift book sized, which can feel like holding hands with someone who is in sync with what is happening in the collective.

Carmen requested that we release this episode on Feb 10 at 3:13pm, which is the lunar return of the book's publication date – so like a mini month-long birthday cycle!

A few links to things we discuss during this episode:

• Collapse in a Nutshell - Podcast episode summarizing collapse topics: https://open.spotify.com/episode/27Strj0h1T5WK19XAVAmit?si=ecb124efd98941c7
• Practicing new worlds, a book Carmen includes in her book club: https://www.akpress.org/practicing-new-worlds-ebook.html
• An article discussing the three key types of activism (along with this author’s proposal for a rebalancing of the different types: https://medium.com/world-summit/imbalanced-spheres-of-activism-and-the-great-turning-that-needs-to-get-turning-50316017d575