October 9, 2023 • 56 mins
This is a conversation about capitalism, and therefore about whiteness and supremacy culture. There is a bit of a record scratch moment when I say something that sounds pretty obliviously white, then correct myself. I like to leave the mistakes in because it's good reconditioning from perfectionism/whiteness. Enjoy!
Sophie Macklin is an anarchist mystic who lived in California for fifteen years but recently returned home to England. She practises brythonic polytheism, antifascism, and devotion to an animate world, and specializes in topics related to radical history, anti-capitalism, antifascism, reclaiming the commons, anti-ableism, and exploring different ways of knowing. She’s an educator whose work has deeply impacted my own.
I've invited Sophie back to the show to talk about capitalism and its accompanying attitudes around productivity, disability, and land use. In this episode, we’re talking about a period of history in England when we saw the end of access to common lands to the system of private property and land ownership which we now think of as normal. If you want to jam on Caliban and the Witch and the work of Silvia Federici, this one's for you!
References
Sophie is a presenter at my annual Witches New Year event – hope you'll join us!
Caliban and the Witch: Women, the Body, and Primitive Accumulation, by Silvia Federici
Horse Power and Magic, George Ewart Evans
Follow Sophie on Instagram @sophiemacklin
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:05):
The Numinous podcast with Carbon Spano.
Hi there and welcome to the Numinous podcast where we have interesting conversations with everyday folks about the Mystery of Life.
I'm your host,
Carmen Spagnola,
joining you from the lands of the Lauan speaking peoples,
(00:27):
the songs and the Esquire First Nations,
recently known as Victoria BC,
Canada.
Sophie Macklin is an anarchist mystic who lived in California for 15 years,
but recently returned home to England.
She practices Brythonic polytheism,
anti fascism and a devotion to the animate world.
(00:49):
And she specializes in topics related to radical history,
anti capitalism,
anti fascism,
reclaiming the comments and exploring different ways of knowing.
She's an educator whose work has deeply impacted my own.
Sophie has previously appeared on the show episode 169.
When we talked about anti fascist folklore.
(01:12):
We also spoke about disability and chronic illness.
Sophie has Eller Danlos disease,
a connective tissue disorder.
And I know many of my listeners are already familiar with it through personal experience or maybe because of my recent episode on the RCCX theory of complex illness.
Eller's downloads is awful at times it's excruciating and it's within the context of that lived experience that Sophie also teaches in her course,
(01:43):
Ungovernable bodies about anti ableism and about historic attitudes towards disability that have shaped our present day health care and social norms.
Once again,
it hasn't always been this way.
If you haven't heard that episode,
then you probably wouldn't know that Sophie is the person I chose to be the first reader of the manuscript for my book,
(02:06):
The Spirited Kitchen.
She's just one of the smartest people I know.
And I really wanted to be careful with my book around what to valorize and what not to valorize in a book about ancestral veneration as a white settler under capitalism.
And in this time of increasing fascism,
I just,
I knew I needed to be very clear and very firm so that my work couldn't be co opted into the service of white supremacy.
(02:35):
I'm so grateful for Sophie for helping me see how I could improve my manuscript.
So I've invited Sophie back to the show and also to be a presenter at my annual Witches New Year event,
which I'll say more about.
At the end of the episode.
In this episode,
we're talking about a period of history in England when we see the end of access to common lands and like a communal style of land management to the system of private property and land ownership which we now think of as normal.
(03:08):
I personally love hearing Sophie teach about this topic and I know you will too.
I'm sure your inner free spirit,
your inner adventurer that yearns for the right to roam freely across the land will feel inspired by her knowledge and her reminders that this is not how it has always been nor how it needs to be so Sophie,
(03:33):
what identities do you lead with now?
Right.
So,
yeah,
I think I'll probably end up saying something similar to what I said last time,
which is that I feel like probably like everyone else.
I feel just part of everything and not really uh bound by identity,
but the identities that situate me in the current power structures are uh white uh disabled sis um working class women.
(04:03):
Um And yeah,
funnily enough,
like since I've moved back to England in the last year,
and I'm feeling much more aware of my identities as a family member.
Like I feel like a daughter,
a sister,
a niece,
an aunt,
a,
a granddaughter,
whatever,
all the things and that feels really,
(04:23):
I'm really seeing myself in relation to my family a lot of the moment.
I hope it's ok for me to share with listeners how when I took your ungovernable bodies,
course your mom was in it too.
And I think maybe we were like the only two people who didn't have really strong lived direct experience of being disabled.
(04:43):
Um but I,
and she never spoke and I never spoke,
but I just really identified with her as a mother of a child who is brilliant and suffers.
And so when I heard that you were going home,
I just,
I just thought of your mom and I was like,
(05:04):
I'm so happy for her.
I'm so relieved that you are home and it's very sweet to me to hear that you are relating as a family member.
Um,
yeah,
it's,
it's very sweet to hear,
hear that.
So you've gone back not only to your,
um childhood roots in your family home,
(05:24):
but you've gone back to like what I would consider like the motherland,
like you've gone back to the actual land where one of your identities,
like you speak with an accent.
You know,
it's like you come,
it's very clear that you come from a certain geography and today we wanted to talk about like capitalism,
but let's go back to pre capitalism.
(05:47):
There's a naturalization of capitalism.
So we can't even imagine what it was like.
But you've gone to a place where actually you can remember you have,
you know,
possibly better records there.
There,
there really isn't very much time that we've had in the new world that wasn't capitalism.
Do we know about human communities before the enclosures on capitalism?
(06:07):
Yeah.
Thank you for that.
Wait a second.
I should just say there's lots of time in on that is like pre capitalism.
But as a white person who comes as a settler,
it's like,
I can't remember it.
This is the naturalization of it.
Right.
It's like,
I don't have any ancestral memory of that.
(06:29):
I try to learn that from indigenous folks but it feels so distant at times.
So,
what do,
what do now from your perspective as a person who's in England?
Yeah.
Um,
it's funny actually.
And something else I want to respond to is what you've just said about that difference between the places because I hadn't really been thinking about that just before we came on.
But um I think in a way that difference or sort of the what it was like before almost exists as a cultural memory in a way I would say more so like in uh like North America where,
(07:01):
because it's like a much newer,
like settler state instead of something that kind of transitioned more slowly.
Um here and over centuries,
I feel like you can often really see the edges of it um in the US and Canada.
Um And where there are still indigenous people with a very strong lived memory of something else or a continuation of something else who are resisting and um fighting for that very different life way.
(07:29):
And here that's not happening at all.
Like that cultural memory of um a sort of non capitalists way of being,
feels extremely kind of and almost literally built over,
you know,
like the architecture in the land is the architecture of post enclosure.
Um And we're still living in the kind of dream of those early capitalists and everyone that came next.
(07:53):
And so there's a way,
it's kind of more like quaint and nice looking something than kind of like American cities that are kind of a bit more brutal or something.
But,
um,
but there's,
you can see the edges.
Yeah.
Um.
Right.
That,
that totally makes sense to me.
It's,
it's so interesting to talk about this from the perspective as a settler who feels so displaced,
(08:14):
not only in space but through time and just,
and to be here,
you know,
I look at indigenous life ways and think like God,
that is so just unknown.
It's so foreign.
You know,
there's like,
you know,
four different language groups from within half an hour of where I live and seven different nations.
(08:35):
And it really does when I,
when I am engaging with indigenous elders,
it really does feel like I should have a passport.
It's like this is,
you know,
that it is so different.
It's such a different life way.
Um And so when I,
then when I see you go home to England home,
I don't know.
(08:56):
Anyway,
you go back to your family lands and you can look and say,
oh,
this is a f that was drained,
this is a,
you know,
and we have records of the resistance and we have written history of that.
It just seems like,
you know,
that it feels like connection to me.
So it's really interesting to hear you say,
like,
actually I feel the opposite.
(09:17):
It's interesting and I think a lot of people who are kind of trying in England,
trying to reclaim and Ireland and Scotland and Wales,
like,
trying to reclaim um more like animus life ways or something are often looking to indigenous people in other places for um understanding or life ways or clues of like what it might have been like,
(09:39):
like there really is an intense level of um amnesia,
disconnection or something that um exist here.
And like you said,
um there is also the thing where um you can go to certain places and see where certain things happened and imagine what things were like before or yeah,
go to um archives or like local history sections of libraries and look through stuff and,
(10:04):
and I,
I do a lot of that and find that really meaningful.
So I understand um the kind of the benefits of that piece too.
So what was it like then from what you've learned when you're researching in the local history,
what do you imagine that life was like prior to capitalism?
Like,
how did human communities function before that?
Um I think I should say,
(10:26):
yeah.
Um we're gonna be talking a bit about enclosure in a minute.
I know and sort of thinking about the time before enclosure.
And I think one of the important things about looking at time before capitalism is that it's hundreds of thousands of years of humans doing stuff and that capitalism is so strange and so recent and so new.
(10:48):
Um,
and that so many different life ways have existed beforehand.
And so when we're looking at the past for clues of how we can live,
we've actually got a lot of options or,
um,
choices in terms of like what to re engage with or what to be fed by or what to learn from.
Um,
because there's just so much history before,
(11:10):
before this.
Um but in that kind of immediate prior to enclosure period,
um I guess,
like,
you know,
it's often talked about that transition to capitalism as kind of the transition from feudalism to capitalism,
almost as this kind of like evolution in um social complexity in kind of progress.
(11:35):
Um This idea that it was kind of this just natural thing that makes sense to do that.
Of course,
we don't want to live with lords and s so,
you know,
capitalism,
then we have individual freedom and stuff like that when in actual fact,
through the feudal era c for contesting that relationship,
um there's kind of relentless class struggle with.
(11:57):
Um instead of this very static idea that gets presented,
you know,
there are massive movements that are um sort of heretical Christian movements of challenging the ideas of who has authority,
like,
you know,
against like the pope and the church and stuff like that.
Um Looking for ways to yeah,
increase their um uh freedoms basically of,
(12:19):
of time or um,
ways that they can look after themselves within that what we can see in the kind of,
um,
oh,
actually,
I guess I just want to say that,
um that was really,
really contested,
like after the Black death.
Um when sort of 40% of the population of Europe were killed,
um that put the peasants in a really strong position where they could kind of demand more because there's just like less workers essentially.
(12:46):
Um And so we see like a lot more antagonism kind of building.
And I think we can really see and this is kind of coming from Sylvia Federici's idea that the transition to capitalism quote unquote is really um a kind of counter revolution from the elites to regain control.
But um within those villages like before um before the enclosures and before that transition,
(13:12):
um there's something that I think is quite evocative to us still this idea of the commons.
Um and thinking of sort of what life was like in a,
in a village,
it would be quite different to what we think of as life in a village now where people have um rights to farm on land,
to graze on land um than to graze the animals on land,
(13:34):
not to go and eat the grass.
But um and to use the forests for firewood or um use the lakes for fishing,
things like that.
But I think sometimes the way that commons are talked about is as if it's just a free for all that.
It's like land that's held by everyone and everyone's just sort of using it.
Um But one of the things that's really interesting about the commons is that it was actually quite a sort of complex social arrangement where people had access to different um patches of land where they would uh grow stuff like within a family group,
(14:08):
say,
um and their other patch that they have rights to might be quite far away.
But it's because it's like a soil type where they would be able to have that sort of variety or something like that.
Um And that these things are kind of worked out sometimes through assemblies or sometimes more informally,
but the constant kind of arrangement of the commons takes quite a high degree of um communication,
(14:30):
sociality,
like sort of um yeah,
in a way that I think it is hard for us to comprehend now because it's so different from our way of surviving um as individuals.
And I think something else that's interesting about feudalism is the land isn't held in common as in,
it's not owned in common,
it's owned by the lords,
(14:51):
but people have a right of access to it.
Um And it's something that's just kind of seen as by the lords and the serfs as like a,
of course,
people need access to land.
Of course,
people sort of have a right to be alive.
Um And that's something that with the transition to capitalism,
really,
it's taken away where after enclosure land is seen as the ex property of one person who can exclude others.
(15:15):
And that's kind of a very sort of post enlightenment idea of property.
I read a really interesting book uh when I was researching The Spirited Kitchen about um cattlemen in medieval Ireland.
So I read this whole book about,
about feudalism in,
in Ireland.
And when you talk about the complex arrangement of the comments,
(15:39):
there was like an entire chapter talking about how like this swale on the landscape was tended to intergenerationally by one family.
And this is how the inheritance of that responsibility went down through the line,
the very next swale of and over had an entirely different complex family relationship through the generations,
(16:04):
which is,
is just kind of a fascinating uh way for like somebody in present day to try to wrap your mind around having to track that many social connections,
like you say,
oh,
I've come home and now it turns out I'm a daughter and a sister and an auntie and we can forget that so easily,
right?
It's just a whole different kind of um world view and,
(16:25):
and um relational kind of world on so many personal and political levels.
Hey.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I really think that that's one of the pieces that's hardest for us to sort of imagine like what that would be like to be living with those kind of complex social arrangements,
um where people would know,
you know,
who's with who's and what's going on and what the arrangements are and are kind of constantly reaffirming that and also that it's different from village to village or manner to manor.
(16:53):
And that one of the things we can sort of trip up on if we try and describe the kind of pre uh precast or just the commons life,
um is making it that it's just like one thing,
you know,
like people were doing different things in different places according to sort of what made sense to them.
And some were going better than others,
you know,
some were probably not very nice places to be and some were probably great,
(17:16):
you know.
Um But it would have just like,
really varied according to what people created.
Um And also how much power they could get for themselves from the lords,
like,
um they,
you know,
people would come together to contest how much uh sort of tax,
you know,
like in grain or whatever that they would have to pay.
Um And so some villagers might have been more successful with that and so have more free time.
(17:40):
Um And actually more free time is another thing that kind of characterizes this era is that there's a lot more um like celebration days off holidays,
saints days,
things like that.
Um And a kind of value in rest.
Um And sort of leisure togetherness,
relaxation that really changes over this period.
(18:04):
How did this happen?
Like,
how,
how did enclosures come to pass?
And how did we shift from things like the right to Rome and tending the common to enclosures and private property and the over extraction we see now.
Yeah,
I think it's a kind of eternally good question that people are still arguing over in terms of the like,
(18:27):
what's the start?
What's the point?
What's the thing?
Because it seems wild like that it happened in a way that a few people,
such a minority of people in the world could gain such power over such large tracks because it's like um the destruction of the commons in England.
But also this is the same period of like um empire and the colonization of the Americas of the slave trade.
(18:51):
And,
you know,
it's,
um it's a kind of mystifying one just about human nature or something,
you know,
that,
that,
that could happen.
But um,
yeah,
first off to just sort of define what enclosure is like,
what the thing is we're talking about.
Um Is,
yeah,
just the privatization of land.
So the ability of one person to define the boundaries of a piece of land and say this is mine and you're not allowed on it.
(19:20):
Um And so what that meant is people that had been used to uh farming land in common and having access to um hunting fishing,
wood gathering uh in many cases very suddenly had that cut off and were often evicted from the land as well.
So suddenly find themselves without a way to support themselves.
(19:42):
Um And without home often and kind of uh displaced into being sort of urban poor and part of the industrial revolution in that way.
Um So that's kind of what we're talking about with enclosure.
And I think we can see different ideologies kind of like working together at the time to sort of justify this.
(20:06):
I think like in this era,
we really see this um sort of ideology of um maybe it's sort of like post reformation,
like pro post protestant reformation and with sort of early capitalism,
this idea of um increased productivity as a value in itself.
(20:26):
Um And with money coming into England from um from its empire,
like from the profits being made by slaveholders and colonists.
Um that was kind of providing a lot of the capital for setting up mills and other things,
other kind of industrial infrastructure in England um that they wanted workers for and they also wanted more land for,
(20:53):
to graze sheep for wool.
Um And it became very much in their interest to evict people from the common land and to um use that land for,
yeah,
for to gain profit,
to be able to generate capital to um this will keep the whole thing going.
(21:14):
So this is when we see the clearances in Scotland and Ireland and different places.
Um,
suddenly you can't pass there,
suddenly you can't go there.
And this is something that was also exported to the new world.
And,
and that's another example I'm remembering Elder Norman,
um,
of the Schach nation where,
(21:34):
where,
where I lead quest tells stories of how the places where he used to go horse riding and like go foraging and all of that as a child,
he like one day there were,
there were fences all over and it was like,
you know,
kind of shocking and that as he became a,
a an adult,
(21:55):
um he would go out and cut the fences,
which of course is like very contentious in ranch land country.
But,
but that,
that is a tool of resistance is just cutting the fences.
And I remember going to Sweden on our honeymoon and we were walking along the shoreline and we were like,
(22:16):
are we allowed to like our guide was taking us across,
you know,
people's backyards and we were like,
are we allowed to be here?
And she was like,
oh,
yeah,
you're allowed to camp anywhere as long as you're not within their sight and you like,
it's kind of,
you,
you know,
leave a little bit,
leave no trace kind of thing.
And so this right to roam thing is also another thing that's like,
(22:37):
oh my gosh,
like I would love to revive something like that.
It turns out this is how people have lived,
like you said,
for,
like,
hundreds of thousands of years,
it must have been such a shock and such a loss.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I think that,
like,
it's kind of what you're saying,
it's always hard for us to imagine that level of contrast because we've grown up with like,
(23:00):
a lot of private property and a lot of places we can't go,
there's some way it's been normalized to us But going from that place where you've lived forever and where you could go wherever you wanted to suddenly being,
um,
completely,
uh sort of cut off from that.
And also at this,
at this time,
they created a lot of really intense laws against things like uh poaching or stealing.
(23:22):
Um where people would then get,
um,
like,
what do you call it?
Uh I would say deported but uh you know,
punished by uh forced migration um and,
or imprisoned and forced labor or things like that or,
or killed for,
for these kind of property offenses.
(23:43):
So,
going from that place where you have like a right to be there to use the resources to suddenly extremely harsh consequences um for it and are kind of forcing into um,
this more like,
yeah,
serve our dependent wage,
labor force.
Yeah,
that must have just been like excruciating.
But within that though,
I think one of the things that's worth noting about how they did it is with difficulty,
(24:07):
you know,
that people did resist this,
um,
that this wasn't something where people did just kind of roll over and like,
ok,
I guess we'll just move to the cities.
You know,
like the person you were just talking about cutting fences,
like people did that,
they,
uh,
took down hedges,
they filled in ditches for draining.
They,
you know,
they did a lot of things to resist this and in some places like preserved areas from enclosure or from draining,
(24:32):
if it was like a sort of wetland area for generations,
like they were successful for quite long periods sometimes.
Um And this is a process that really did take a couple of 100 years to really fully.
Um And arguably we're still in the process of enclosure and there are still edges and still um places of contestation.
Um Including,
I don't know if you're aware of the moment.
(24:54):
There's quite a big movement here of the right to roam campaign.
Do you know I've been following some things like this on uh Instagram pos possibly because I follow you.
And so it feeds me other things that like right in Scotland,
they do have the right to roam,
but just like on the other side of the border,
you don't.
Yeah,
that's right.
So,
yeah,
in Scotland,
(25:14):
kind of what you've described in Sweden,
it sounds very similar.
Um But in England,
that's not that at all.
And if,
if it's private property officially,
that means you're just absolutely not allowed to be there.
Um And so people are organizing mass trespasses and things like that and trying to really challenge what um private property means and who has rights to work within that.
Um And it's,
(25:35):
it's really becoming quite a big movement,
which is,
which is really cool.
So,
yeah,
it is really cool.
And at the same time here again,
this is where like I as a settler,
I don't have like a felt sense of connection to that kind of loss or movement.
It feels like this is all I've ever seen is trespass on indigenous land.
(25:57):
And so it's,
it's like a hard thing to grapple with where it's like,
well,
I would love,
you know,
whenever um if I'm like on the water or in a boat or on the ferry and you see all these people with waterfront property and I just think,
fuck those guys,
you know,
like it just,
it pisses me off so much.
And if I think about people coming across,
(26:17):
I'm not a land donor.
But if I were to try to imagine,
like,
if I had a farm and somebody was like tromping along and setting up a,
you know,
campsite and having a little fire there at night,
I would feel very like,
concerned and distressed.
I'd be like,
oh,
like,
are they gonna be respectful?
So there's like kind of that feeling ownership of it.
But also as somebody who's trying to unlearn colonization,
(26:41):
I think will,
I shouldn't just be like,
I shouldn't be tromping around on other people's land.
Like,
and so this is indigenous property.
I shouldn't be,
I shouldn't just be like using it as I want,
I want to be there in a good way.
And so there's like also one more step that I would need to make,
I think as a step to be like,
so how are we gonna be here in a good way where all of us have access?
(27:04):
It's,
it,
it feels like there's like multiple layers of grappling with that.
It's just so wrong in my body to be impeded from getting from like to the ocean side,
for instance,
it just,
it just feels so wrong.
Yeah.
Yeah,
I think that's a really important um and sort of interesting piece in terms of the contrast between these two places.
(27:27):
And I think like,
what you're doing and what you're saying is that kind of following indigenous leadership on that,
you know,
around like how to be there in a good way and sort of how to,
you know,
support like efforts in terms of like land back or in terms of indigenous sovereignty in the areas that um you're inhabiting and stuff like that.
And it's interesting because I think that sometimes I notice with North America,
(27:49):
like it can seem like in Europe or in England,
we're just sort of free of that,
that burden or that issue.
But I think kind of like I was saying,
like with the enclosures um and with the development of capitalism and with the wealth that is in this country that came from colonization.
And when you're walking down the streets here,
(28:10):
you're walking on wealth created by the enslavement of Africans and um and the genocide of um indigenous people.
And there's not a sort of out of it.
And it's interesting that even like this right to roam campaign,
which I think is amazing and wonderful.
And I don't really want to sort of criticize it,
but it is at the moment,
(28:30):
largely white and middle class,
not,
not entirely and really,
really,
not entirely,
but there's a way that those kind of things have to be grappled with here of who has access to,
to space,
who feels the safety to trespass and take that risk um who lives nearby uh green spaces and who doesn't.
(28:50):
And,
and these are questions that the right to own campaign is grappling with very well,
but it's,
it's a thing,
you know,
like it's tensions exist here too just in a different way.
Yeah.
So can we pull in a little bit more Silvia Federici here?
And for,
you know,
listeners who are new to um Richie's work,
I'll put links in the show notes,
(29:10):
but she's a just absolute powerhouse um uh feminist and cultural analyst who wrote an excellent book,
Caliban and The Witch,
uh Women,
The Body and Primitive Accumulation is that what it is.
Yeah.
And so what parallels do you see between the treatment,
the land and the treatment of bodies and specifically like unable or disabled bodies?
(29:35):
Yeah,
I think it's a really,
really massive one in terms of understanding some of the things that we live in now around,
like how we think of our bodies or how we think of what we should be doing or something like that.
You can really see the formation of it in this.
And so I think it's really useful to kind of look to,
um,
an example I use in my classes and kind of love is talking about um,
(29:56):
the draining of the fens,
which is an area of wetland in the east of England.
That's kind of uh 1600 square miles,
like quite a,
uh,
you know,
it's a,
it's a big area.
Um And the draining of the fens is a project that goes on over a couple of 100 years,
but is the complete draining of that massive wetland um,
(30:17):
into,
into farmland.
Um,
today,
less than 1% of wetland there remains.
Um,
which is just staggering that it can be that big.
Um But what's interesting about that is before the enclosures,
people were living on that land in a way that where they were sort of surviving by like fishing and hunting or like using the resources of the land in that way,
(30:40):
in a way that was,
didn't produce excess like,
wasn't productive,
like in this way that they were kind of participating in the sort of bigger economy of Britain,
but were kind of just like living in this,
in this Fenway and the capitalists that wanted to drain that um And create farmland.
You can read the documents of like um their proposals of what they want to do.
(31:04):
And it's all about how the fens are this lazy landscape where it's kind of boggy and useless.
Um And the rivers meander,
like,
it's funny how even a river can be described as like lazy.
Um And that the people,
the sort of lazy,
slothful,
(31:25):
beggarly type of person.
Um And that what they want to do is drain the fens,
turn it into really productive land,
um build canals that take the water straight out to the sea um as if that's a good thing.
Um And just like,
are really using this ideology of increased productivity as a virtue.
(31:48):
Um And we can sort of see this going along with um the kind of religious transformations at the time and the sort of move through like sort of puritanism and different types of protestantism where the preachers are literally kind of trying to make a virtue out of this um idea of productivity,
self-discipline um and sort of demonizing uh the ways of life that might be more communal or demonizing disability and need.
(32:17):
Yeah,
I think this is where I think where Silvia Federici has um,
like interesting stuff to offer just around,
looking at the witch hunts and the role of the witch hunts,
um,
in this development and looking at the witch hunts as something where it's mainly poor women who are being targeted and mainly by,
(32:37):
um,
sort of upper class men basically.
Um,
and that it's like a sort of top down persecution.
Um,
and something I was thinking about with,
um,
with that is she talks about how a lot of the accusations are around um like accusing a witch of begging.
(33:00):
And then when she got refused,
like the butter or flour or something,
she then cursed the family and then the mom comes down with a really bad headache the next day.
So she's a witch.
Um And just talking about having to demonize the people who were actually most impoverished by the enclosures.
(33:22):
Um in order to kind of justify it.
Um rather than what we can see kind of pre reformation is that if people are ill or don't have what they need,
it's seen sort of as just fate or just God just does that and it's a communal responsibility to take care of them.
Um or even the church sort of take care of them.
(33:44):
Um But with this ideology,
it becomes like a personal responsibility and your fault if you're ill or poor.
Um And so then this idea that if you're then asking for what you need,
like begging,
um it's there must be something evil about you.
There must be something,
yeah,
really bad.
(34:04):
And it,
it reminds me kind of,
of how homeless people or like unhoused people are talked about or see in our culture now that I think that there's such discomfort with like visible need,
um that they're often talked about it,
like dangerous and threatening and stuff when they're literally just existing,
you know.
(34:25):
Um Yeah.
Are there other sites of resistance that inspire you?
Like I'm thinking about Caliban in the,
which Federici does provide examples of like bread riots and things like that where,
you know,
like these,
these older women,
they,
they did get pissed at some point and they did collectivize,
you know,
are there other examples that really inspire you?
(34:46):
Yeah,
I think that's um something that's like throughout this whole period,
there is constant resistance and one of the things that inspires me is kind of,
it feels like whenever you like pick up a stone to look underneath it,
there's resistance,
you know,
that this is something that just people were doing all the time.
Like I think,
you know,
we can name the kind of big rebellions that are really inspiring,
(35:07):
let's say the Midlands revolt where people were so organized,
there's like thousands of people coming together with an artillery to defend themselves or whatever or um just people collectively going out.
Yeah,
and filling in ditches or tearing down fences or setting up ways of caring for each other and that are kind of outside of this ideology and it,
(35:28):
it feels like that's a constant thread and there still is a thread,
you know,
like that.
The project hasn't ever been completed.
Like,
um,
we're still living in,
in the edge of it where it feels pretty brutal and pretty thorough,
but we're here talking about this right now,
which we wouldn't be if it had completely won,
you know.
Yeah.
Absolutely.
(35:48):
Specifically for people who are disabled.
What do you see happening before and after the enclosures?
Yeah.
So before,
um and again,
obviously it's different in different places and different times,
I always feel like I have to leave with that.
Um But before there is um,
more of an idea of it being a communal responsibility if somebody is disabled or needs looking after more.
(36:13):
Um And so that would be something that would be more shared um by,
by sort of community members and again,
also by the church,
like for all their faults and it was in a very sort of paternalistic power structured way,
but there was kind of just this idea that um the poor and needy should be cared for and if you're like disabled,
(36:37):
chronically ill or something like that,
um There's an ethic of that being something that,
yeah,
needs,
needs care and there were places to go.
It was like,
here's what we do at this convent,
here's what we're doing at this monastery.
And anybody could come and eat and stay.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So like that kind of network of,
(36:57):
um,
like hostels hospitals.
Um,
in,
yeah,
in religious institutions.
And then if people are kind of being looked after at home,
um,
or maybe they,
maybe they're,
um,
disabled in a way that they participate in some activities but not in others,
but it's just kind of like normalized more or accepted more.
(37:19):
Um,
and,
you know,
also a big change that we should probably mentioned already is just um like the healers that are available like in the village,
you know,
people who are um specializing in different types of herbal medicine or midwifery or um just kind of knowledge of how to care for people um could support people too like in the home and things like that.
(37:46):
Um And that with this transition,
not only do we have the dissolution of the monasteries and kind of the destruction of all those religious institutions.
Um But we also have the persecution of women who are providing that kind of support um through the,
through the witch trials and everything.
Um where that's just a drastic change.
(38:07):
And so that combined with this um more kind of post reformation idea of illness being your own fault or means there's something wrong with you means that people's access to care goes down drastically um and ability to survive goes down drastically,
you know,
like it's just,
(38:27):
yeah,
becomes,
becomes a lot harder.
Yeah.
Thank you for saying that about the healers because this seems like,
you know,
that's getting to the core of why this is such an important part of my witchcraft.
Like,
when I think about what makes a witch it's,
it's animism and it's activism and you're speaking exactly to that.
Right.
So,
I think I just can't get down with a,
(38:48):
a kind of magical practice or witchcraft that,
that doesn't have some kind of sense of our history,
like capitalism,
capitalism.
Right.
Yeah.
And I think that's like,
it's really important just thinking about that different type of worldview of preca preform,
kind of worldview of a kind of more enchanted world view like that,
(39:10):
even though it's Christian,
it's Catholic.
Um,
people are using a lot of charms or,
you know,
things like that.
Sort of,
there's a lot more,
just sort of active folklore about like the weather or,
you know,
just being in a body.
Um,
and,
and magic,
even if that's the kind of magic that is,
that looks Christian as in,
(39:31):
um,
it's praying over someone for something or like,
um,
doing a certain prayer and offering,
um,
going hear the healing wells or going to hear the healing wells.
Yeah,
exactly.
That it's stuff that we might recognize as magic,
but we're sort of normally Christian.
Um,
and that this world view was really attacked by the ideologies coming in.
(39:53):
Um,
and Sylvia Federici makes the,
I think,
convincing argument that,
this is kind of because with magic it's looking at getting something for nothing.
It's,
you know,
it's power that's obtained not through work and a wage,
but it's outside of that.
Um,
and also is,
you know,
magic is something that weaves us into a relationship.
You know,
it has us paying attention to our relationships,
(40:15):
to plants,
to the cycles of the moon to rain,
you know,
whatever.
Um,
and this is something that's a threat to a social system that wants bodies to be cut off from that really and willing or able to survive in a sort of factory setting,
cut off from senses and rest and pleasure and stuff.
(40:36):
Like you really have to break people's spirits,
you know,
like I'm laughing with the horror,
sorry.
Um you know,
to be able to kind of get through that.
And so that attack on kind of um magic or um yeah,
non rational ways of thinking or in a way,
highly rational ways of thinking that we're interconnected with the life.
(40:57):
But yeah,
that's a massive part of this transition.
Yeah,
totally.
The,
the other Sophie who's a brilliant person with Eller Stanwell syndrome.
Sophie strand was on the show and,
and she was talking about like the supernatural is the most natural way.
Magic is the most natural way.
Enchantment is the most natural way to be in it's capitalist imperialist,
(41:20):
white supremacist patriarchy,
say it in that way.
But like essentially capitalism.
Um as a stand in is the most unnatural way to be human.
Yeah.
Truly.
And I think it's so bizarre that we're living,
um,
in this period where it's become so naturalized and normalized that people will sort of make arguments about human nature or like the reality of the world from this extremely recent human experiment,
(41:46):
basically.
And obviously it's an experiment that's got so out of hand that it might destroy,
you know,
whole ecosystems and possibly the world or whatever.
Like it's,
it's wild how extreme that is.
But it's so I feel like our bodies do remember and do feel something different to that.
Um because we've evolved over millions of years to something different than that,
(42:10):
you know,
and I think that's the way we're always coming up against um our kind of desires or our feelings.
Um in contrast to what we're told we're supposed to be doing um in our coaches.
Um And I think that's what we,
you know,
we have a little pushback throughout history and now,
well,
and it's so ironic then if we think about kind of like Instagram witchcraft craze kind of thing or like Tik Tok witchcraft and,
(42:36):
you know,
me trying to find my place a little bit there because I do like the magic of the internet.
Like I do think like that's a pretty amazing conjurer to be able to like access all this and it could be a power that,
that we harness you know,
for good in some ways.
Um And it does feel like a fairly direct uh parallel,
(42:58):
like a repetition compulsion in our history to be like,
OK,
this thing is happening and I want to resist it and I still have to,
I'm trying to survive within it.
But this is why I hope that listeners who are curious or,
or even,
um,
well,
I'm gonna say particularly if,
if you're a well practiced witch and you're here,
then we clearly are on the same wavelength.
(43:18):
But if you're a newer witch and you haven't really thought about how you're being sold,
the archetype of the witch or the archetype and,
and,
and like,
it can cost just like baffling amounts of money sometimes to like,
go to these retreats or get these once a month spell kits or all that stuff.
It's like very tricky to be a working class witch when I see witchcraft and capital getting whipped up into a frenzy together.
(43:43):
It,
it hurts my soul and my body.
It's just so ironic.
It's so painful to see like a glossed over hyper capitalist version of and hyper consuming version of witchcraft.
Yeah,
absolutely.
I,
I really,
really think that,
um,
and it's funny,
(44:04):
it reminds me of something,
um,
in the period that we were talking about,
which is,
I often think that this kind of early days of the internet is like in the 17th century,
the early days of cheap printing um when suddenly people could make pamphlets that would um go out and be spread around um where a lot more people had access to sharing their ideas and to hearing new ideas and people kind of moving around in this era.
(44:29):
Um sharing those ideas and those pamphlets and what you see is um a lot of radical ideas um getting shared that way and a lot of really cool stuff coming from that like um in terms of different social movements or ideas.
Um But it gets shut down basically um by those in power who realize that it's this tool that can be used in this way um and start to create a monopoly over who can print things and who can do things.
(44:59):
And I think that we've seen a similar thing happen kind of already where compared to the early days of the internet,
we all know the kind of curse of the algorithm or whatever that it will promote certain content that it's not a completely free sharing.
Um And it's,
it is quote unquote,
just a tool like the sort of early printing presses and the power structures that we're living in are being expressed through it.
(45:26):
Um And so we're seeing all these different things,
but I think there is still the possibility of using it as a place of um challenging these,
these norms and of promoting working class witchcraft.
Yeah,
I hope so.
I,
I think often I relate to um the period of like the late 18 hundreds,
(45:47):
the early 19 hundreds where farmers had had um like horsepower was displaced and they were using steam engine.
And uh there's a great book.
It's called Horsepower and Magic.
And the first half of it is about actual farming like,
and they talked about what it was like when the steam engines came in and how this was gonna be so bad for the soil.
(46:10):
They were already talking about that then that like this is we're gonna hit a limit of what this actual land can do.
And the second half of the book was about the magic of horses and,
and how they healed them with herbs and all of that kind of stuff.
And I really,
right now in my life,
I relate to that period of time of just the writing is on the wall and you just know,
(46:30):
like we have to stop.
Is there a period in history that you look back to that you particularly relate to is feeling so,
um like salient to our days today?
Hm.
Uh I feel like I jump between a few look,
I feel like at the moment,
um I feel like this,
(46:51):
the period that we're kind of talking about,
um especially the 16 hundreds when you see,
especially in the middle of that period when you have movements like the diggers.
And it seemed at the time like things could go the way of the kind of radicals,
I guess,
like,
it was a time when these things were still very much in flux and the capitalists hadn't,
like,
fully won.
(47:12):
You know,
and I think about that of like,
um what it's like to be in those moments where like a lot is possible,
but there's a lot of power against you.
And I think that seeing people's creativity and um stuff in that time is inspiring to me a time period,
I've been deep in,
at the moment with local history is the 18 thirties,
(47:33):
um which is when you get um the new poor law and the kind of mass introduction of workhouses and a big change in how poor relief is administered.
Um And also changes in agriculture that mean um a lot of works lost and things like that.
And there's a lot of stories of uh resistance to that that are kind of remind me of the kind of uh atmosphere of what's going on in England right now,
(48:02):
which is uh post 10 years of the right wing government of um austerity and the so called cost of living crisis and where people are really struggling to meet basic needs and kind of what's gonna happen next with that,
like where are the tipping points with that?
Um And you know,
we are seeing more strikes in the last year in England than in than there have been for a long time.
(48:27):
Um And so that thing where people's material needs are suddenly really challenged and um people have to come together to kind of resist that.
Um That's interesting and inspiring to me,
I've also been looking a lot at early Christian saints in the,
in the 6th and 7th century locally as well.
Um as just this type of Christianity,
(48:49):
that's much more um animist really where they're very connected to the healing waters and healing plants and,
and connection with animals and magic and stuff.
Um And then looking at what happens with um the kind of enforcement of a very patriarchal non animist Christianity.
(49:09):
Um and that kind of uh massive culture shift.
Um I think it has a lot of interesting points for us now too.
I always find it interesting to look back and try to see like,
and so how long did that culture shift take?
Like when they say it actually took 400 years for the Roman Empire to,
to fall?
And so the average Roman,
(49:32):
you know,
the way they started their life and ended their life didn't actually seem that different really.
It took like multiple generations for that baseline to shift.
I,
I I'll be fascinated to see,
you know,
looking back,
it would be amazing from,
from some cosmic perspective.
How,
where was I in the great transition,
you know,
(49:52):
in history?
How far away are we tell something very different,
you know?
Yeah,
I think about that a lot too like uh yeah,
I wonder how do you cope with the grief and the rage of confinement?
Yeah.
I think it,
it,
it's interesting,
I feel like one of the places I'm experiencing the most,
like grief and rage.
And has it been used that word confinement?
Um,
(50:12):
what I think about is at the moment there's a massive housing building uh operation in,
in the county.
I live in,
in England more broadly.
But,
um,
the town I live in which is Faversham in Kent has um housing developments happening in every direction surrounding the town.
And this is true for most towns in Kent at the moment.
(50:34):
Um and a lot of um villages to like beautiful land is being destroyed for housing.
Um but it's mainly large uh housing for people with a lot of money.
It's not even like for the social good.
So it's this land that's kind of like with,
I guess it's a continuation of what we're talking about um land that's being out,
(50:56):
taken out of um access either for food production or for just walking on or enjoying um is now being taken to just profit the uh developers.
Um And sometimes I feel really yeah or suffocated by it,
the sensation of it.
And also um I don't know if it's made it in the news over there,
(51:19):
but we're having this massive problem of pollution in the rivers and the sea at the moment.
Um The water company has was privatized.
I forget how long ago,
maybe 1520 years ago,
I can't remember exactly when,
but,
um,
they've basically to maximize profit,
maximized profits,
been releasing a lot of untreated sewage into the water around here.
(51:41):
So,
it's meant a summer of mostly not being able to go in the sea or,
um,
in the rivers and that feels awful to me and lots of other people here.
Um,
and that's literally,
it's just profit,
you know.
so they have a right to destroy that kind of commons of the sea um for their individual profits.
(52:05):
So sometimes I have like some pretty intense feelings about this.
Um But I think like,
what helps me cope with those feelings is a couple of things like is the obvious,
like connection,
you know,
with people who feel similarly and we can share these things.
Um and also to,
you know,
plants and animals and places that are still here.
(52:28):
Um And I think one of the things that's kind of prepared me for that is grief and loss in my life and a kind of appreciation of what remains like,
I think,
um especially like I was with a friend um when they died last year and it was quite,
it had quite a big impact on me as you as you might expect.
(52:48):
Um But one of the things that's changed for me since then is a real appreciation of life and of the gift of it,
like it feels genuinely kind of miraculous to me most of the time just that we get to be here and do this.
Um And thinking of like the scale of loss really means that the things that we do have really do feel precious to me just like a tree outside my window or an apple in my kitchen that I'm gonna eat,
(53:16):
feels like a miracle if I think about it for a second,
you know.
Um And I feel really fed by just being able to like,
appreciate and be nourished by these kind of smaller things.
Um,
and I feel like that really helps me with,
with coping with it.
Yeah.
Wow.
And my eyes are tearing.
(53:36):
That's so beautiful.
It's like the opposite way of a lot of people like,
oh,
the problems are so great and so I feel so overwhelmed,
but it's like the antidote to that is what a miracle then that this apple exists and I'm gonna eat it.
It's a miracle and especially,
(53:56):
you know,
when we're looking at this history at just how much has been destroyed.
The fact that we're here having this conversation about this,
you know,
or the fact that I,
you know,
we do have what we do have is because people have,
have resisted or fought for those things.
And,
um,
and we get to live in the benefit of that and that's,
that's a miracle.
That,
that's wonderful.
(54:17):
Well,
I can't wait for witches new Year for folks.
To be able to spend more time in the miracle of that.
Thank you so much for sharing this so far today,
Sophie always enjoy hearing you speak,
hear you talk forever about this.
I really appreciate that.
Thank you.
Thank you.
You'll find links to Sophie's work and her socials in the show notes in your podcast player or at numinous podcast.com.
(54:41):
And I hope you'll join us at Witches New Year.
Uh Sophie's going to talk about the transition from a centuries long tradition of a rotational system of soil management that included fallow lands,
which in effect mirrored the social rhythm of much more rest and recovery in social times like she mentioned today.
So this like protestant and capitalist work ethic we know now um which not only like devalues and erases disability but directly causes disability.
(55:12):
So her session at Witcher New Year is called fallow land,
restful bodies and tickets are on sale.
Now at my website also linked in the show notes.
I would like to thank this listener who gave a five star review to the Numinous podcast in their podcast app,
Rachel Sage from Canada wrote.
So applicable from Collapse Awareness to somatics,
(55:34):
to attachment styles and relationships and more.
I love listening to Carmen's podcast.
It helps me feel grounded and expands my mind.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you Rachel Sage.
I super duper,
appreciate that.
Once again,
Richard's New Year is happening this year on Saturday,
October 28th.
We've got Sophie,
we've got recent guests of the podcast,
(55:55):
Shana Janz leading ancestral veneration for nonlinear lineages.
Uh We have author and therapist Terran Erfan,
leading therapeutic writing for Collaborative Rage and DEA Anderson,
key contributor to a project.
We all know and love the Channy app.
The number one Astrology app,
she will be giving us the lowdown on the Astrological outlook for 2024.
(56:17):
It's a hot ticket,
get it now at my website,
Carmens spagnola.com,
Carmenspagnol A until next time.
Take care.
The Numinous podcast with Carbon Spano.
Hi there and welcome to the Numinous podcast where we have interesting conversations with everyday folks about the Mystery of Life.
I'm your host,
Carmen Spagnola,
joining you from the lands of the Lauan speaking peoples,
(00:27):
the songs and the Esquire First Nations,
recently known as Victoria BC,
Canada.
Sophie Macklin is an anarchist mystic who lived in California for 15 years,
but recently returned home to England.
She practices Brythonic polytheism,
anti fascism and a devotion to the animate world.
(00:49):
And she specializes in topics related to radical history,
anti capitalism,
anti fascism,
reclaiming the comments and exploring different ways of knowing.
She's an educator whose work has deeply impacted my own.
Sophie has previously appeared on the show episode 169.
When we talked about anti fascist folklore.
(01:12):
We also spoke about disability and chronic illness.
Sophie has Eller Danlos disease,
a connective tissue disorder.
And I know many of my listeners are already familiar with it through personal experience or maybe because of my recent episode on the RCCX theory of complex illness.
Eller's downloads is awful at times it's excruciating and it's within the context of that lived experience that Sophie also teaches in her course,
(01:43):
Ungovernable bodies about anti ableism and about historic attitudes towards disability that have shaped our present day health care and social norms.
Once again,
it hasn't always been this way.
If you haven't heard that episode,
then you probably wouldn't know that Sophie is the person I chose to be the first reader of the manuscript for my book,
(02:06):
The Spirited Kitchen.
She's just one of the smartest people I know.
And I really wanted to be careful with my book around what to valorize and what not to valorize in a book about ancestral veneration as a white settler under capitalism.
And in this time of increasing fascism,
I just,
I knew I needed to be very clear and very firm so that my work couldn't be co opted into the service of white supremacy.
(02:35):
I'm so grateful for Sophie for helping me see how I could improve my manuscript.
So I've invited Sophie back to the show and also to be a presenter at my annual Witches New Year event,
which I'll say more about.
At the end of the episode.
In this episode,
we're talking about a period of history in England when we see the end of access to common lands and like a communal style of land management to the system of private property and land ownership which we now think of as normal.
(03:08):
I personally love hearing Sophie teach about this topic and I know you will too.
I'm sure your inner free spirit,
your inner adventurer that yearns for the right to roam freely across the land will feel inspired by her knowledge and her reminders that this is not how it has always been nor how it needs to be so Sophie,
(03:33):
what identities do you lead with now?
Right.
So,
yeah,
I think I'll probably end up saying something similar to what I said last time,
which is that I feel like probably like everyone else.
I feel just part of everything and not really uh bound by identity,
but the identities that situate me in the current power structures are uh white uh disabled sis um working class women.
(04:03):
Um And yeah,
funnily enough,
like since I've moved back to England in the last year,
and I'm feeling much more aware of my identities as a family member.
Like I feel like a daughter,
a sister,
a niece,
an aunt,
a,
a granddaughter,
whatever,
all the things and that feels really,
(04:23):
I'm really seeing myself in relation to my family a lot of the moment.
I hope it's ok for me to share with listeners how when I took your ungovernable bodies,
course your mom was in it too.
And I think maybe we were like the only two people who didn't have really strong lived direct experience of being disabled.
(04:43):
Um but I,
and she never spoke and I never spoke,
but I just really identified with her as a mother of a child who is brilliant and suffers.
And so when I heard that you were going home,
I just,
I just thought of your mom and I was like,
(05:04):
I'm so happy for her.
I'm so relieved that you are home and it's very sweet to me to hear that you are relating as a family member.
Um,
yeah,
it's,
it's very sweet to hear,
hear that.
So you've gone back not only to your,
um childhood roots in your family home,
(05:24):
but you've gone back to like what I would consider like the motherland,
like you've gone back to the actual land where one of your identities,
like you speak with an accent.
You know,
it's like you come,
it's very clear that you come from a certain geography and today we wanted to talk about like capitalism,
but let's go back to pre capitalism.
(05:47):
There's a naturalization of capitalism.
So we can't even imagine what it was like.
But you've gone to a place where actually you can remember you have,
you know,
possibly better records there.
There,
there really isn't very much time that we've had in the new world that wasn't capitalism.
Do we know about human communities before the enclosures on capitalism?
(06:07):
Yeah.
Thank you for that.
Wait a second.
I should just say there's lots of time in on that is like pre capitalism.
But as a white person who comes as a settler,
it's like,
I can't remember it.
This is the naturalization of it.
Right.
It's like,
I don't have any ancestral memory of that.
(06:29):
I try to learn that from indigenous folks but it feels so distant at times.
So,
what do,
what do now from your perspective as a person who's in England?
Yeah.
Um,
it's funny actually.
And something else I want to respond to is what you've just said about that difference between the places because I hadn't really been thinking about that just before we came on.
But um I think in a way that difference or sort of the what it was like before almost exists as a cultural memory in a way I would say more so like in uh like North America where,
(07:01):
because it's like a much newer,
like settler state instead of something that kind of transitioned more slowly.
Um here and over centuries,
I feel like you can often really see the edges of it um in the US and Canada.
Um And where there are still indigenous people with a very strong lived memory of something else or a continuation of something else who are resisting and um fighting for that very different life way.
(07:29):
And here that's not happening at all.
Like that cultural memory of um a sort of non capitalists way of being,
feels extremely kind of and almost literally built over,
you know,
like the architecture in the land is the architecture of post enclosure.
Um And we're still living in the kind of dream of those early capitalists and everyone that came next.
(07:53):
And so there's a way,
it's kind of more like quaint and nice looking something than kind of like American cities that are kind of a bit more brutal or something.
But,
um,
but there's,
you can see the edges.
Yeah.
Um.
Right.
That,
that totally makes sense to me.
It's,
it's so interesting to talk about this from the perspective as a settler who feels so displaced,
(08:14):
not only in space but through time and just,
and to be here,
you know,
I look at indigenous life ways and think like God,
that is so just unknown.
It's so foreign.
You know,
there's like,
you know,
four different language groups from within half an hour of where I live and seven different nations.
(08:35):
And it really does when I,
when I am engaging with indigenous elders,
it really does feel like I should have a passport.
It's like this is,
you know,
that it is so different.
It's such a different life way.
Um And so when I,
then when I see you go home to England home,
I don't know.
(08:56):
Anyway,
you go back to your family lands and you can look and say,
oh,
this is a f that was drained,
this is a,
you know,
and we have records of the resistance and we have written history of that.
It just seems like,
you know,
that it feels like connection to me.
So it's really interesting to hear you say,
like,
actually I feel the opposite.
(09:17):
It's interesting and I think a lot of people who are kind of trying in England,
trying to reclaim and Ireland and Scotland and Wales,
like,
trying to reclaim um more like animus life ways or something are often looking to indigenous people in other places for um understanding or life ways or clues of like what it might have been like,
(09:39):
like there really is an intense level of um amnesia,
disconnection or something that um exist here.
And like you said,
um there is also the thing where um you can go to certain places and see where certain things happened and imagine what things were like before or yeah,
go to um archives or like local history sections of libraries and look through stuff and,
(10:04):
and I,
I do a lot of that and find that really meaningful.
So I understand um the kind of the benefits of that piece too.
So what was it like then from what you've learned when you're researching in the local history,
what do you imagine that life was like prior to capitalism?
Like,
how did human communities function before that?
Um I think I should say,
(10:26):
yeah.
Um we're gonna be talking a bit about enclosure in a minute.
I know and sort of thinking about the time before enclosure.
And I think one of the important things about looking at time before capitalism is that it's hundreds of thousands of years of humans doing stuff and that capitalism is so strange and so recent and so new.
(10:48):
Um,
and that so many different life ways have existed beforehand.
And so when we're looking at the past for clues of how we can live,
we've actually got a lot of options or,
um,
choices in terms of like what to re engage with or what to be fed by or what to learn from.
Um,
because there's just so much history before,
(11:10):
before this.
Um but in that kind of immediate prior to enclosure period,
um I guess,
like,
you know,
it's often talked about that transition to capitalism as kind of the transition from feudalism to capitalism,
almost as this kind of like evolution in um social complexity in kind of progress.
(11:35):
Um This idea that it was kind of this just natural thing that makes sense to do that.
Of course,
we don't want to live with lords and s so,
you know,
capitalism,
then we have individual freedom and stuff like that when in actual fact,
through the feudal era c for contesting that relationship,
um there's kind of relentless class struggle with.
(11:57):
Um instead of this very static idea that gets presented,
you know,
there are massive movements that are um sort of heretical Christian movements of challenging the ideas of who has authority,
like,
you know,
against like the pope and the church and stuff like that.
Um Looking for ways to yeah,
increase their um uh freedoms basically of,
(12:19):
of time or um,
ways that they can look after themselves within that what we can see in the kind of,
um,
oh,
actually,
I guess I just want to say that,
um that was really,
really contested,
like after the Black death.
Um when sort of 40% of the population of Europe were killed,
um that put the peasants in a really strong position where they could kind of demand more because there's just like less workers essentially.
(12:46):
Um And so we see like a lot more antagonism kind of building.
And I think we can really see and this is kind of coming from Sylvia Federici's idea that the transition to capitalism quote unquote is really um a kind of counter revolution from the elites to regain control.
But um within those villages like before um before the enclosures and before that transition,
(13:12):
um there's something that I think is quite evocative to us still this idea of the commons.
Um and thinking of sort of what life was like in a,
in a village,
it would be quite different to what we think of as life in a village now where people have um rights to farm on land,
to graze on land um than to graze the animals on land,
(13:34):
not to go and eat the grass.
But um and to use the forests for firewood or um use the lakes for fishing,
things like that.
But I think sometimes the way that commons are talked about is as if it's just a free for all that.
It's like land that's held by everyone and everyone's just sort of using it.
Um But one of the things that's really interesting about the commons is that it was actually quite a sort of complex social arrangement where people had access to different um patches of land where they would uh grow stuff like within a family group,
(14:08):
say,
um and their other patch that they have rights to might be quite far away.
But it's because it's like a soil type where they would be able to have that sort of variety or something like that.
Um And that these things are kind of worked out sometimes through assemblies or sometimes more informally,
but the constant kind of arrangement of the commons takes quite a high degree of um communication,
(14:30):
sociality,
like sort of um yeah,
in a way that I think it is hard for us to comprehend now because it's so different from our way of surviving um as individuals.
And I think something else that's interesting about feudalism is the land isn't held in common as in,
it's not owned in common,
it's owned by the lords,
(14:51):
but people have a right of access to it.
Um And it's something that's just kind of seen as by the lords and the serfs as like a,
of course,
people need access to land.
Of course,
people sort of have a right to be alive.
Um And that's something that with the transition to capitalism,
really,
it's taken away where after enclosure land is seen as the ex property of one person who can exclude others.
(15:15):
And that's kind of a very sort of post enlightenment idea of property.
I read a really interesting book uh when I was researching The Spirited Kitchen about um cattlemen in medieval Ireland.
So I read this whole book about,
about feudalism in,
in Ireland.
And when you talk about the complex arrangement of the comments,
(15:39):
there was like an entire chapter talking about how like this swale on the landscape was tended to intergenerationally by one family.
And this is how the inheritance of that responsibility went down through the line,
the very next swale of and over had an entirely different complex family relationship through the generations,
(16:04):
which is,
is just kind of a fascinating uh way for like somebody in present day to try to wrap your mind around having to track that many social connections,
like you say,
oh,
I've come home and now it turns out I'm a daughter and a sister and an auntie and we can forget that so easily,
right?
It's just a whole different kind of um world view and,
(16:25):
and um relational kind of world on so many personal and political levels.
Hey.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I really think that that's one of the pieces that's hardest for us to sort of imagine like what that would be like to be living with those kind of complex social arrangements,
um where people would know,
you know,
who's with who's and what's going on and what the arrangements are and are kind of constantly reaffirming that and also that it's different from village to village or manner to manor.
(16:53):
And that one of the things we can sort of trip up on if we try and describe the kind of pre uh precast or just the commons life,
um is making it that it's just like one thing,
you know,
like people were doing different things in different places according to sort of what made sense to them.
And some were going better than others,
you know,
some were probably not very nice places to be and some were probably great,
(17:16):
you know.
Um But it would have just like,
really varied according to what people created.
Um And also how much power they could get for themselves from the lords,
like,
um they,
you know,
people would come together to contest how much uh sort of tax,
you know,
like in grain or whatever that they would have to pay.
Um And so some villagers might have been more successful with that and so have more free time.
(17:40):
Um And actually more free time is another thing that kind of characterizes this era is that there's a lot more um like celebration days off holidays,
saints days,
things like that.
Um And a kind of value in rest.
Um And sort of leisure togetherness,
relaxation that really changes over this period.
(18:04):
How did this happen?
Like,
how,
how did enclosures come to pass?
And how did we shift from things like the right to Rome and tending the common to enclosures and private property and the over extraction we see now.
Yeah,
I think it's a kind of eternally good question that people are still arguing over in terms of the like,
(18:27):
what's the start?
What's the point?
What's the thing?
Because it seems wild like that it happened in a way that a few people,
such a minority of people in the world could gain such power over such large tracks because it's like um the destruction of the commons in England.
But also this is the same period of like um empire and the colonization of the Americas of the slave trade.
(18:51):
And,
you know,
it's,
um it's a kind of mystifying one just about human nature or something,
you know,
that,
that,
that could happen.
But um,
yeah,
first off to just sort of define what enclosure is like,
what the thing is we're talking about.
Um Is,
yeah,
just the privatization of land.
So the ability of one person to define the boundaries of a piece of land and say this is mine and you're not allowed on it.
(19:20):
Um And so what that meant is people that had been used to uh farming land in common and having access to um hunting fishing,
wood gathering uh in many cases very suddenly had that cut off and were often evicted from the land as well.
So suddenly find themselves without a way to support themselves.
(19:42):
Um And without home often and kind of uh displaced into being sort of urban poor and part of the industrial revolution in that way.
Um So that's kind of what we're talking about with enclosure.
And I think we can see different ideologies kind of like working together at the time to sort of justify this.
(20:06):
I think like in this era,
we really see this um sort of ideology of um maybe it's sort of like post reformation,
like pro post protestant reformation and with sort of early capitalism,
this idea of um increased productivity as a value in itself.
(20:26):
Um And with money coming into England from um from its empire,
like from the profits being made by slaveholders and colonists.
Um that was kind of providing a lot of the capital for setting up mills and other things,
other kind of industrial infrastructure in England um that they wanted workers for and they also wanted more land for,
(20:53):
to graze sheep for wool.
Um And it became very much in their interest to evict people from the common land and to um use that land for,
yeah,
for to gain profit,
to be able to generate capital to um this will keep the whole thing going.
(21:14):
So this is when we see the clearances in Scotland and Ireland and different places.
Um,
suddenly you can't pass there,
suddenly you can't go there.
And this is something that was also exported to the new world.
And,
and that's another example I'm remembering Elder Norman,
um,
of the Schach nation where,
(21:34):
where,
where I lead quest tells stories of how the places where he used to go horse riding and like go foraging and all of that as a child,
he like one day there were,
there were fences all over and it was like,
you know,
kind of shocking and that as he became a,
a an adult,
(21:55):
um he would go out and cut the fences,
which of course is like very contentious in ranch land country.
But,
but that,
that is a tool of resistance is just cutting the fences.
And I remember going to Sweden on our honeymoon and we were walking along the shoreline and we were like,
(22:16):
are we allowed to like our guide was taking us across,
you know,
people's backyards and we were like,
are we allowed to be here?
And she was like,
oh,
yeah,
you're allowed to camp anywhere as long as you're not within their sight and you like,
it's kind of,
you,
you know,
leave a little bit,
leave no trace kind of thing.
And so this right to roam thing is also another thing that's like,
(22:37):
oh my gosh,
like I would love to revive something like that.
It turns out this is how people have lived,
like you said,
for,
like,
hundreds of thousands of years,
it must have been such a shock and such a loss.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I think that,
like,
it's kind of what you're saying,
it's always hard for us to imagine that level of contrast because we've grown up with like,
(23:00):
a lot of private property and a lot of places we can't go,
there's some way it's been normalized to us But going from that place where you've lived forever and where you could go wherever you wanted to suddenly being,
um,
completely,
uh sort of cut off from that.
And also at this,
at this time,
they created a lot of really intense laws against things like uh poaching or stealing.
(23:22):
Um where people would then get,
um,
like,
what do you call it?
Uh I would say deported but uh you know,
punished by uh forced migration um and,
or imprisoned and forced labor or things like that or,
or killed for,
for these kind of property offenses.
(23:43):
So,
going from that place where you have like a right to be there to use the resources to suddenly extremely harsh consequences um for it and are kind of forcing into um,
this more like,
yeah,
serve our dependent wage,
labor force.
Yeah,
that must have just been like excruciating.
But within that though,
I think one of the things that's worth noting about how they did it is with difficulty,
(24:07):
you know,
that people did resist this,
um,
that this wasn't something where people did just kind of roll over and like,
ok,
I guess we'll just move to the cities.
You know,
like the person you were just talking about cutting fences,
like people did that,
they,
uh,
took down hedges,
they filled in ditches for draining.
They,
you know,
they did a lot of things to resist this and in some places like preserved areas from enclosure or from draining,
(24:32):
if it was like a sort of wetland area for generations,
like they were successful for quite long periods sometimes.
Um And this is a process that really did take a couple of 100 years to really fully.
Um And arguably we're still in the process of enclosure and there are still edges and still um places of contestation.
Um Including,
I don't know if you're aware of the moment.
(24:54):
There's quite a big movement here of the right to roam campaign.
Do you know I've been following some things like this on uh Instagram pos possibly because I follow you.
And so it feeds me other things that like right in Scotland,
they do have the right to roam,
but just like on the other side of the border,
you don't.
Yeah,
that's right.
So,
yeah,
in Scotland,
(25:14):
kind of what you've described in Sweden,
it sounds very similar.
Um But in England,
that's not that at all.
And if,
if it's private property officially,
that means you're just absolutely not allowed to be there.
Um And so people are organizing mass trespasses and things like that and trying to really challenge what um private property means and who has rights to work within that.
Um And it's,
(25:35):
it's really becoming quite a big movement,
which is,
which is really cool.
So,
yeah,
it is really cool.
And at the same time here again,
this is where like I as a settler,
I don't have like a felt sense of connection to that kind of loss or movement.
It feels like this is all I've ever seen is trespass on indigenous land.
(25:57):
And so it's,
it's like a hard thing to grapple with where it's like,
well,
I would love,
you know,
whenever um if I'm like on the water or in a boat or on the ferry and you see all these people with waterfront property and I just think,
fuck those guys,
you know,
like it just,
it pisses me off so much.
And if I think about people coming across,
(26:17):
I'm not a land donor.
But if I were to try to imagine,
like,
if I had a farm and somebody was like tromping along and setting up a,
you know,
campsite and having a little fire there at night,
I would feel very like,
concerned and distressed.
I'd be like,
oh,
like,
are they gonna be respectful?
So there's like kind of that feeling ownership of it.
But also as somebody who's trying to unlearn colonization,
(26:41):
I think will,
I shouldn't just be like,
I shouldn't be tromping around on other people's land.
Like,
and so this is indigenous property.
I shouldn't be,
I shouldn't just be like using it as I want,
I want to be there in a good way.
And so there's like also one more step that I would need to make,
I think as a step to be like,
so how are we gonna be here in a good way where all of us have access?
(27:04):
It's,
it,
it feels like there's like multiple layers of grappling with that.
It's just so wrong in my body to be impeded from getting from like to the ocean side,
for instance,
it just,
it just feels so wrong.
Yeah.
Yeah,
I think that's a really important um and sort of interesting piece in terms of the contrast between these two places.
(27:27):
And I think like,
what you're doing and what you're saying is that kind of following indigenous leadership on that,
you know,
around like how to be there in a good way and sort of how to,
you know,
support like efforts in terms of like land back or in terms of indigenous sovereignty in the areas that um you're inhabiting and stuff like that.
And it's interesting because I think that sometimes I notice with North America,
(27:49):
like it can seem like in Europe or in England,
we're just sort of free of that,
that burden or that issue.
But I think kind of like I was saying,
like with the enclosures um and with the development of capitalism and with the wealth that is in this country that came from colonization.
And when you're walking down the streets here,
(28:10):
you're walking on wealth created by the enslavement of Africans and um and the genocide of um indigenous people.
And there's not a sort of out of it.
And it's interesting that even like this right to roam campaign,
which I think is amazing and wonderful.
And I don't really want to sort of criticize it,
but it is at the moment,
(28:30):
largely white and middle class,
not,
not entirely and really,
really,
not entirely,
but there's a way that those kind of things have to be grappled with here of who has access to,
to space,
who feels the safety to trespass and take that risk um who lives nearby uh green spaces and who doesn't.
(28:50):
And,
and these are questions that the right to own campaign is grappling with very well,
but it's,
it's a thing,
you know,
like it's tensions exist here too just in a different way.
Yeah.
So can we pull in a little bit more Silvia Federici here?
And for,
you know,
listeners who are new to um Richie's work,
I'll put links in the show notes,
(29:10):
but she's a just absolute powerhouse um uh feminist and cultural analyst who wrote an excellent book,
Caliban and The Witch,
uh Women,
The Body and Primitive Accumulation is that what it is.
Yeah.
And so what parallels do you see between the treatment,
the land and the treatment of bodies and specifically like unable or disabled bodies?
(29:35):
Yeah,
I think it's a really,
really massive one in terms of understanding some of the things that we live in now around,
like how we think of our bodies or how we think of what we should be doing or something like that.
You can really see the formation of it in this.
And so I think it's really useful to kind of look to,
um,
an example I use in my classes and kind of love is talking about um,
(29:56):
the draining of the fens,
which is an area of wetland in the east of England.
That's kind of uh 1600 square miles,
like quite a,
uh,
you know,
it's a,
it's a big area.
Um And the draining of the fens is a project that goes on over a couple of 100 years,
but is the complete draining of that massive wetland um,
(30:17):
into,
into farmland.
Um,
today,
less than 1% of wetland there remains.
Um,
which is just staggering that it can be that big.
Um But what's interesting about that is before the enclosures,
people were living on that land in a way that where they were sort of surviving by like fishing and hunting or like using the resources of the land in that way,
(30:40):
in a way that was,
didn't produce excess like,
wasn't productive,
like in this way that they were kind of participating in the sort of bigger economy of Britain,
but were kind of just like living in this,
in this Fenway and the capitalists that wanted to drain that um And create farmland.
You can read the documents of like um their proposals of what they want to do.
(31:04):
And it's all about how the fens are this lazy landscape where it's kind of boggy and useless.
Um And the rivers meander,
like,
it's funny how even a river can be described as like lazy.
Um And that the people,
the sort of lazy,
slothful,
(31:25):
beggarly type of person.
Um And that what they want to do is drain the fens,
turn it into really productive land,
um build canals that take the water straight out to the sea um as if that's a good thing.
Um And just like,
are really using this ideology of increased productivity as a virtue.
(31:48):
Um And we can sort of see this going along with um the kind of religious transformations at the time and the sort of move through like sort of puritanism and different types of protestantism where the preachers are literally kind of trying to make a virtue out of this um idea of productivity,
self-discipline um and sort of demonizing uh the ways of life that might be more communal or demonizing disability and need.
(32:17):
Yeah,
I think this is where I think where Silvia Federici has um,
like interesting stuff to offer just around,
looking at the witch hunts and the role of the witch hunts,
um,
in this development and looking at the witch hunts as something where it's mainly poor women who are being targeted and mainly by,
(32:37):
um,
sort of upper class men basically.
Um,
and that it's like a sort of top down persecution.
Um,
and something I was thinking about with,
um,
with that is she talks about how a lot of the accusations are around um like accusing a witch of begging.
(33:00):
And then when she got refused,
like the butter or flour or something,
she then cursed the family and then the mom comes down with a really bad headache the next day.
So she's a witch.
Um And just talking about having to demonize the people who were actually most impoverished by the enclosures.
(33:22):
Um in order to kind of justify it.
Um rather than what we can see kind of pre reformation is that if people are ill or don't have what they need,
it's seen sort of as just fate or just God just does that and it's a communal responsibility to take care of them.
Um or even the church sort of take care of them.
(33:44):
Um But with this ideology,
it becomes like a personal responsibility and your fault if you're ill or poor.
Um And so then this idea that if you're then asking for what you need,
like begging,
um it's there must be something evil about you.
There must be something,
yeah,
really bad.
(34:04):
And it,
it reminds me kind of,
of how homeless people or like unhoused people are talked about or see in our culture now that I think that there's such discomfort with like visible need,
um that they're often talked about it,
like dangerous and threatening and stuff when they're literally just existing,
you know.
(34:25):
Um Yeah.
Are there other sites of resistance that inspire you?
Like I'm thinking about Caliban in the,
which Federici does provide examples of like bread riots and things like that where,
you know,
like these,
these older women,
they,
they did get pissed at some point and they did collectivize,
you know,
are there other examples that really inspire you?
(34:46):
Yeah,
I think that's um something that's like throughout this whole period,
there is constant resistance and one of the things that inspires me is kind of,
it feels like whenever you like pick up a stone to look underneath it,
there's resistance,
you know,
that this is something that just people were doing all the time.
Like I think,
you know,
we can name the kind of big rebellions that are really inspiring,
(35:07):
let's say the Midlands revolt where people were so organized,
there's like thousands of people coming together with an artillery to defend themselves or whatever or um just people collectively going out.
Yeah,
and filling in ditches or tearing down fences or setting up ways of caring for each other and that are kind of outside of this ideology and it,
(35:28):
it feels like that's a constant thread and there still is a thread,
you know,
like that.
The project hasn't ever been completed.
Like,
um,
we're still living in,
in the edge of it where it feels pretty brutal and pretty thorough,
but we're here talking about this right now,
which we wouldn't be if it had completely won,
you know.
Yeah.
Absolutely.
(35:48):
Specifically for people who are disabled.
What do you see happening before and after the enclosures?
Yeah.
So before,
um and again,
obviously it's different in different places and different times,
I always feel like I have to leave with that.
Um But before there is um,
more of an idea of it being a communal responsibility if somebody is disabled or needs looking after more.
(36:13):
Um And so that would be something that would be more shared um by,
by sort of community members and again,
also by the church,
like for all their faults and it was in a very sort of paternalistic power structured way,
but there was kind of just this idea that um the poor and needy should be cared for and if you're like disabled,
(36:37):
chronically ill or something like that,
um There's an ethic of that being something that,
yeah,
needs,
needs care and there were places to go.
It was like,
here's what we do at this convent,
here's what we're doing at this monastery.
And anybody could come and eat and stay.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So like that kind of network of,
(36:57):
um,
like hostels hospitals.
Um,
in,
yeah,
in religious institutions.
And then if people are kind of being looked after at home,
um,
or maybe they,
maybe they're,
um,
disabled in a way that they participate in some activities but not in others,
but it's just kind of like normalized more or accepted more.
(37:19):
Um,
and,
you know,
also a big change that we should probably mentioned already is just um like the healers that are available like in the village,
you know,
people who are um specializing in different types of herbal medicine or midwifery or um just kind of knowledge of how to care for people um could support people too like in the home and things like that.
(37:46):
Um And that with this transition,
not only do we have the dissolution of the monasteries and kind of the destruction of all those religious institutions.
Um But we also have the persecution of women who are providing that kind of support um through the,
through the witch trials and everything.
Um where that's just a drastic change.
(38:07):
And so that combined with this um more kind of post reformation idea of illness being your own fault or means there's something wrong with you means that people's access to care goes down drastically um and ability to survive goes down drastically,
you know,
like it's just,
(38:27):
yeah,
becomes,
becomes a lot harder.
Yeah.
Thank you for saying that about the healers because this seems like,
you know,
that's getting to the core of why this is such an important part of my witchcraft.
Like,
when I think about what makes a witch it's,
it's animism and it's activism and you're speaking exactly to that.
Right.
So,
I think I just can't get down with a,
(38:48):
a kind of magical practice or witchcraft that,
that doesn't have some kind of sense of our history,
like capitalism,
capitalism.
Right.
Yeah.
And I think that's like,
it's really important just thinking about that different type of worldview of preca preform,
kind of worldview of a kind of more enchanted world view like that,
(39:10):
even though it's Christian,
it's Catholic.
Um,
people are using a lot of charms or,
you know,
things like that.
Sort of,
there's a lot more,
just sort of active folklore about like the weather or,
you know,
just being in a body.
Um,
and,
and magic,
even if that's the kind of magic that is,
that looks Christian as in,
(39:31):
um,
it's praying over someone for something or like,
um,
doing a certain prayer and offering,
um,
going hear the healing wells or going to hear the healing wells.
Yeah,
exactly.
That it's stuff that we might recognize as magic,
but we're sort of normally Christian.
Um,
and that this world view was really attacked by the ideologies coming in.
(39:53):
Um,
and Sylvia Federici makes the,
I think,
convincing argument that,
this is kind of because with magic it's looking at getting something for nothing.
It's,
you know,
it's power that's obtained not through work and a wage,
but it's outside of that.
Um,
and also is,
you know,
magic is something that weaves us into a relationship.
You know,
it has us paying attention to our relationships,
(40:15):
to plants,
to the cycles of the moon to rain,
you know,
whatever.
Um,
and this is something that's a threat to a social system that wants bodies to be cut off from that really and willing or able to survive in a sort of factory setting,
cut off from senses and rest and pleasure and stuff.
(40:36):
Like you really have to break people's spirits,
you know,
like I'm laughing with the horror,
sorry.
Um you know,
to be able to kind of get through that.
And so that attack on kind of um magic or um yeah,
non rational ways of thinking or in a way,
highly rational ways of thinking that we're interconnected with the life.
(40:57):
But yeah,
that's a massive part of this transition.
Yeah,
totally.
The,
the other Sophie who's a brilliant person with Eller Stanwell syndrome.
Sophie strand was on the show and,
and she was talking about like the supernatural is the most natural way.
Magic is the most natural way.
Enchantment is the most natural way to be in it's capitalist imperialist,
(41:20):
white supremacist patriarchy,
say it in that way.
But like essentially capitalism.
Um as a stand in is the most unnatural way to be human.
Yeah.
Truly.
And I think it's so bizarre that we're living,
um,
in this period where it's become so naturalized and normalized that people will sort of make arguments about human nature or like the reality of the world from this extremely recent human experiment,
(41:46):
basically.
And obviously it's an experiment that's got so out of hand that it might destroy,
you know,
whole ecosystems and possibly the world or whatever.
Like it's,
it's wild how extreme that is.
But it's so I feel like our bodies do remember and do feel something different to that.
Um because we've evolved over millions of years to something different than that,
(42:10):
you know,
and I think that's the way we're always coming up against um our kind of desires or our feelings.
Um in contrast to what we're told we're supposed to be doing um in our coaches.
Um And I think that's what we,
you know,
we have a little pushback throughout history and now,
well,
and it's so ironic then if we think about kind of like Instagram witchcraft craze kind of thing or like Tik Tok witchcraft and,
(42:36):
you know,
me trying to find my place a little bit there because I do like the magic of the internet.
Like I do think like that's a pretty amazing conjurer to be able to like access all this and it could be a power that,
that we harness you know,
for good in some ways.
Um And it does feel like a fairly direct uh parallel,
(42:58):
like a repetition compulsion in our history to be like,
OK,
this thing is happening and I want to resist it and I still have to,
I'm trying to survive within it.
But this is why I hope that listeners who are curious or,
or even,
um,
well,
I'm gonna say particularly if,
if you're a well practiced witch and you're here,
then we clearly are on the same wavelength.
(43:18):
But if you're a newer witch and you haven't really thought about how you're being sold,
the archetype of the witch or the archetype and,
and,
and like,
it can cost just like baffling amounts of money sometimes to like,
go to these retreats or get these once a month spell kits or all that stuff.
It's like very tricky to be a working class witch when I see witchcraft and capital getting whipped up into a frenzy together.
(43:43):
It,
it hurts my soul and my body.
It's just so ironic.
It's so painful to see like a glossed over hyper capitalist version of and hyper consuming version of witchcraft.
Yeah,
absolutely.
I,
I really,
really think that,
um,
and it's funny,
(44:04):
it reminds me of something,
um,
in the period that we were talking about,
which is,
I often think that this kind of early days of the internet is like in the 17th century,
the early days of cheap printing um when suddenly people could make pamphlets that would um go out and be spread around um where a lot more people had access to sharing their ideas and to hearing new ideas and people kind of moving around in this era.
(44:29):
Um sharing those ideas and those pamphlets and what you see is um a lot of radical ideas um getting shared that way and a lot of really cool stuff coming from that like um in terms of different social movements or ideas.
Um But it gets shut down basically um by those in power who realize that it's this tool that can be used in this way um and start to create a monopoly over who can print things and who can do things.
(44:59):
And I think that we've seen a similar thing happen kind of already where compared to the early days of the internet,
we all know the kind of curse of the algorithm or whatever that it will promote certain content that it's not a completely free sharing.
Um And it's,
it is quote unquote,
just a tool like the sort of early printing presses and the power structures that we're living in are being expressed through it.
(45:26):
Um And so we're seeing all these different things,
but I think there is still the possibility of using it as a place of um challenging these,
these norms and of promoting working class witchcraft.
Yeah,
I hope so.
I,
I think often I relate to um the period of like the late 18 hundreds,
(45:47):
the early 19 hundreds where farmers had had um like horsepower was displaced and they were using steam engine.
And uh there's a great book.
It's called Horsepower and Magic.
And the first half of it is about actual farming like,
and they talked about what it was like when the steam engines came in and how this was gonna be so bad for the soil.
(46:10):
They were already talking about that then that like this is we're gonna hit a limit of what this actual land can do.
And the second half of the book was about the magic of horses and,
and how they healed them with herbs and all of that kind of stuff.
And I really,
right now in my life,
I relate to that period of time of just the writing is on the wall and you just know,
(46:30):
like we have to stop.
Is there a period in history that you look back to that you particularly relate to is feeling so,
um like salient to our days today?
Hm.
Uh I feel like I jump between a few look,
I feel like at the moment,
um I feel like this,
(46:51):
the period that we're kind of talking about,
um especially the 16 hundreds when you see,
especially in the middle of that period when you have movements like the diggers.
And it seemed at the time like things could go the way of the kind of radicals,
I guess,
like,
it was a time when these things were still very much in flux and the capitalists hadn't,
like,
fully won.
(47:12):
You know,
and I think about that of like,
um what it's like to be in those moments where like a lot is possible,
but there's a lot of power against you.
And I think that seeing people's creativity and um stuff in that time is inspiring to me a time period,
I've been deep in,
at the moment with local history is the 18 thirties,
(47:33):
um which is when you get um the new poor law and the kind of mass introduction of workhouses and a big change in how poor relief is administered.
Um And also changes in agriculture that mean um a lot of works lost and things like that.
And there's a lot of stories of uh resistance to that that are kind of remind me of the kind of uh atmosphere of what's going on in England right now,
(48:02):
which is uh post 10 years of the right wing government of um austerity and the so called cost of living crisis and where people are really struggling to meet basic needs and kind of what's gonna happen next with that,
like where are the tipping points with that?
Um And you know,
we are seeing more strikes in the last year in England than in than there have been for a long time.
(48:27):
Um And so that thing where people's material needs are suddenly really challenged and um people have to come together to kind of resist that.
Um That's interesting and inspiring to me,
I've also been looking a lot at early Christian saints in the,
in the 6th and 7th century locally as well.
Um as just this type of Christianity,
(48:49):
that's much more um animist really where they're very connected to the healing waters and healing plants and,
and connection with animals and magic and stuff.
Um And then looking at what happens with um the kind of enforcement of a very patriarchal non animist Christianity.
(49:09):
Um and that kind of uh massive culture shift.
Um I think it has a lot of interesting points for us now too.
I always find it interesting to look back and try to see like,
and so how long did that culture shift take?
Like when they say it actually took 400 years for the Roman Empire to,
to fall?
And so the average Roman,
(49:32):
you know,
the way they started their life and ended their life didn't actually seem that different really.
It took like multiple generations for that baseline to shift.
I,
I I'll be fascinated to see,
you know,
looking back,
it would be amazing from,
from some cosmic perspective.
How,
where was I in the great transition,
you know,
(49:52):
in history?
How far away are we tell something very different,
you know?
Yeah,
I think about that a lot too like uh yeah,
I wonder how do you cope with the grief and the rage of confinement?
Yeah.
I think it,
it,
it's interesting,
I feel like one of the places I'm experiencing the most,
like grief and rage.
And has it been used that word confinement?
Um,
(50:12):
what I think about is at the moment there's a massive housing building uh operation in,
in the county.
I live in,
in England more broadly.
But,
um,
the town I live in which is Faversham in Kent has um housing developments happening in every direction surrounding the town.
And this is true for most towns in Kent at the moment.
(50:34):
Um and a lot of um villages to like beautiful land is being destroyed for housing.
Um but it's mainly large uh housing for people with a lot of money.
It's not even like for the social good.
So it's this land that's kind of like with,
I guess it's a continuation of what we're talking about um land that's being out,
(50:56):
taken out of um access either for food production or for just walking on or enjoying um is now being taken to just profit the uh developers.
Um And sometimes I feel really yeah or suffocated by it,
the sensation of it.
And also um I don't know if it's made it in the news over there,
(51:19):
but we're having this massive problem of pollution in the rivers and the sea at the moment.
Um The water company has was privatized.
I forget how long ago,
maybe 1520 years ago,
I can't remember exactly when,
but,
um,
they've basically to maximize profit,
maximized profits,
been releasing a lot of untreated sewage into the water around here.
(51:41):
So,
it's meant a summer of mostly not being able to go in the sea or,
um,
in the rivers and that feels awful to me and lots of other people here.
Um,
and that's literally,
it's just profit,
you know.
so they have a right to destroy that kind of commons of the sea um for their individual profits.
(52:05):
So sometimes I have like some pretty intense feelings about this.
Um But I think like,
what helps me cope with those feelings is a couple of things like is the obvious,
like connection,
you know,
with people who feel similarly and we can share these things.
Um and also to,
you know,
plants and animals and places that are still here.
(52:28):
Um And I think one of the things that's kind of prepared me for that is grief and loss in my life and a kind of appreciation of what remains like,
I think,
um especially like I was with a friend um when they died last year and it was quite,
it had quite a big impact on me as you as you might expect.
(52:48):
Um But one of the things that's changed for me since then is a real appreciation of life and of the gift of it,
like it feels genuinely kind of miraculous to me most of the time just that we get to be here and do this.
Um And thinking of like the scale of loss really means that the things that we do have really do feel precious to me just like a tree outside my window or an apple in my kitchen that I'm gonna eat,
(53:16):
feels like a miracle if I think about it for a second,
you know.
Um And I feel really fed by just being able to like,
appreciate and be nourished by these kind of smaller things.
Um,
and I feel like that really helps me with,
with coping with it.
Yeah.
Wow.
And my eyes are tearing.
(53:36):
That's so beautiful.
It's like the opposite way of a lot of people like,
oh,
the problems are so great and so I feel so overwhelmed,
but it's like the antidote to that is what a miracle then that this apple exists and I'm gonna eat it.
It's a miracle and especially,
(53:56):
you know,
when we're looking at this history at just how much has been destroyed.
The fact that we're here having this conversation about this,
you know,
or the fact that I,
you know,
we do have what we do have is because people have,
have resisted or fought for those things.
And,
um,
and we get to live in the benefit of that and that's,
that's a miracle.
That,
that's wonderful.
(54:17):
Well,
I can't wait for witches new Year for folks.
To be able to spend more time in the miracle of that.
Thank you so much for sharing this so far today,
Sophie always enjoy hearing you speak,
hear you talk forever about this.
I really appreciate that.
Thank you.
Thank you.
You'll find links to Sophie's work and her socials in the show notes in your podcast player or at numinous podcast.com.
(54:41):
And I hope you'll join us at Witches New Year.
Uh Sophie's going to talk about the transition from a centuries long tradition of a rotational system of soil management that included fallow lands,
which in effect mirrored the social rhythm of much more rest and recovery in social times like she mentioned today.
So this like protestant and capitalist work ethic we know now um which not only like devalues and erases disability but directly causes disability.
(55:12):
So her session at Witcher New Year is called fallow land,
restful bodies and tickets are on sale.
Now at my website also linked in the show notes.
I would like to thank this listener who gave a five star review to the Numinous podcast in their podcast app,
Rachel Sage from Canada wrote.
So applicable from Collapse Awareness to somatics,
(55:34):
to attachment styles and relationships and more.
I love listening to Carmen's podcast.
It helps me feel grounded and expands my mind.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you Rachel Sage.
I super duper,
appreciate that.
Once again,
Richard's New Year is happening this year on Saturday,
October 28th.
We've got Sophie,
we've got recent guests of the podcast,
(55:55):
Shana Janz leading ancestral veneration for nonlinear lineages.
Uh We have author and therapist Terran Erfan,
leading therapeutic writing for Collaborative Rage and DEA Anderson,
key contributor to a project.
We all know and love the Channy app.
The number one Astrology app,
she will be giving us the lowdown on the Astrological outlook for 2024.
(56:17):
It's a hot ticket,
get it now at my website,
Carmens spagnola.com,
Carmenspagnol A until next time.
Take care.
Popular Podcasts
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
The Nikki Glaser Podcast
Every week comedian and infamous roaster Nikki Glaser provides a fun, fast-paced, and brutally honest look into current pop-culture and her own personal life.