Your Average Witch Podcast
A podcast by and about your average witch, talking about witch life, witch stories, and sometimes a little witchcraft.
Your Average Witch Podcast
Math, Magic, And Witch Fire with Sara Mastros
What do you wish I asked this guest? What was your "quotable moment" from this episode?
We sit down with author and teacher Sara Mastros to explore the difference between magic and witchcraft, why the word "witch" carries class and power, and how collaboration builds real results. From Solomonic roots to muse rituals and a legendary snow spell, we share tools, stories, and practical ways to learn without losing the spark.
• choosing witch as class solidarity and stance
• magic as technique, witchcraft as ignition
• building shared vocabulary across traditions
• co‑magicians as the best beginner strategy
• Polya problem solving applied to spells
• daily practices: meditation and muse invocations
• publishing realities and digital tarot work
• initiation, risk, and sustaining witch fire
• grief, kindness, and community resilience
• book, courses, and upcoming events
Introduction to Witchcraft, 13 Lessons in the Practice of Magic, is Sara's new book. Find this and more at witchlessons.com!
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Welcome back to Your Average Witch, where every other Tuesday we talk about witch life, witch stories, and sometimes a little witchcraft. This episode is brought to you by Crepuscular Conjuration. Get witch tools, magical jewelry, and more at crepuscularconjuration.com. This week I’m talking with author Sara Mastros. We talked about math, magic, and her new book, Introduction to Witchcraft. Now let’s get to the stories!
00:00:32.60
Kimothy
Sara, hello. Welcome to the show.
00:00:34.89
Sara Mastros
Hello, thank you for having me.
00:00:36.52
Kimothy
It's a thrill to have you here. We have been chatting offline for a few minutes, so I'm feeling a little bit giggly. But can you please introduce yourself and let everybody know who you are and what you do and where they can find you?
00:00:51.16
Sara Mastros
Sure, my name is Sara Mastros. um I predominantly write books and teach courses about witchcraft and sorcery. I mean, professionally, I actually have a whole life that's not that as well.
00:01:03.98
Sara Mastros
That's a total lie. It's mostly that. It's mostly the witchcraft and the sorcery. That's what I do. um So the easiest place to find me is witchlessons.com. You can find all my courses there. um In terms of social media, Facebook is probably the best place to follow me and YouTube. And if you really want to find me anywhere, just put my name in quotes, like Sara Mastros in quotes, and Google will bring up only me. If you don't put it in quotes, it'll be like, do you mean Sarah Masters? And you'll have to be like, no, I definitely do not mean Sarah Masters.
00:01:37.72
Kimothy
No offense, Sarah Masters, but we're not here for you.
00:01:40.92
Sara Mastros
I mean, I feel sad for Sarah Masters because there's like a million people with that name. And I know I have friends who like have quite common names. And like my colleague, Jason Miller, he's not even the most famous Jason Miller. Like if you put his name in Google, there's like a sports baller.
00:01:57.43
Kimothy
Yeah.
00:01:58.54
Sara Mastros
There's like a conservative political analyst. And I feel like if I ever met someone with my name, I'd have to instantly so like challenge them to a duel. So I'm pretty glad.
00:02:07.64
Kimothy
I was going to say kill them, but yeah.
00:02:09.40
Sara Mastros
Yeah, but well, I mean, maybe they'd win. um I'm not much of a fighter, so it's a dangerous business for me to be in, challenging people to duels. But yeah, no, I'm really, i i used to really hate my name as a kid, but now I really like it.
00:02:24.73
Kimothy
Well, that's good.
00:02:25.71
Sara Mastros
Yeah.
00:02:28.59
Sara Mastros
Kimothy is also an interesting name.
00:02:30.99
Kimothy
That name was given to me by my dear friend, Macy.
00:02:34.36
Sara Mastros
Nice.
00:02:34.55
Kimothy
And now it's become my name to the point that I forgot it isn't my name.
00:02:34.57
Sara Mastros
Nice.
00:02:38.95
Kimothy
And when they call people named Timothy, I start walking to them. It's happened twice at the doctor.
00:02:46.78
Sara Mastros
Nice.
00:02:49.91
Kimothy
Can you, you go by the term witch. You've like claimed that for yourself.
00:02:53.68
Sara Mastros
Yeah.
00:02:54.92
Kimothy
Can you tell everybody what that means, what that word means to you and how it applies to what you do?
00:03:01.53
Sara Mastros
Yeah, so let me first, I'm going to answer the question you asked, but first I'm going ask a related question, which is like why I chose witch sort of professionally, right? Because like I am a witch, but I'm also lots of other things. Like I am also an occultist. I am also a magician. i am also a sorceress.
00:03:19.36
Sara Mastros
So like the reason I chose which as the identification that I use like professionally is predominantly about politics. Like it is to assert my solidarity with women, with foreigners, with refugees, with poor people, with the unhoused and with other people at the crossroads. So I think in our culture, sometimes when we look at words like say witch versus wizard,
00:03:43.50
Sara Mastros
There's this understanding that those are gendered terms, but I don't think that is true. Like historically, those are terms that are about like class, economic class. And if you if you like imagine in your head a witch and like look at what she's wearing and and she's wearing like a raggedy peasant dress, right?
00:04:01.21
Kimothy
she lives in a hut.
00:04:01.34
Sara Mastros
but if you, Right, but if you look at like a wizard, he lives in a castle and is wearing like fancy robes. And so to me, like that that class solidarity is is actually quite relevant in the word witch relative to these other words.
00:04:07.18
Kimothy
Mm hmm.
00:04:14.97
Sara Mastros
That being said, i also… I'm gonna say something that i understand is a little bit controversial and I'm not telling other people that they're using the word, okay. i I low key am a little bit telling some people that they're using the word witch wrong. Like there are people where I see them use the word witch or witchcraft in a way that I'm like, oh, my sister in witchcraft decorating a Christmas tree for sure is not witchcraft. Like it's it's actually not, that's historically not accurate. But broadly, i do think that the word witch relative to some other words we have for like wonder workers in English is about, the essence of who you are. Like being a sorceress is about practicing sorcery, right? Whereas being a witch is about having your internal witch fire, like your witch blood heated up, right? It's it's ah but it's an othering experience that sets you outside of like mainstream hegemonaic culture, over culture. I understand that was a really nerdy and long answer to what was a very simple question, sorry.
00:05:22.81
Kimothy
I like it. i I like it.
00:05:25.15
Sara Mastros
Well good, because I'm gonna be nervous about that.
00:05:26.53
Kimothy
that Nobody's ever said that before, so now I have something to think about later.
00:05:32.82
Sara Mastros
If you wanna read more about that, I think BJ Swain is a friend and colleague of mine who's been doing a lot of really fascinating like historical research and writing about like what the nature of witchcraft as a kind of supernatural othering is. So that's who I would recommend on that topic.
00:05:51.30
Kimothy
I'm going to be frank and say I have not finished the book, but I have read some of it. In fact, this morning and the the fact that you want us to figure out the difference between magic and witchcraft hurt my head, but I know it's something I should work on. and I'm interested to do it.
00:06:08.42
Sara Mastros
I mean, they're really complicated distinctions. And I'll tell you, it's been decades of me trying to work out those differences. And it's not like I have it all figured out at this point. Also, if it makes you feel better, the majority of interviews I do, they clearly haven't even opened the book.
00:06:17.35
Kimothy
Well, that makes sense. It does.
00:06:21.73
Sara Mastros
So that's fine.
00:06:22.52
Kimothy
It does make me feel better. Everything you just said made me feel better.
00:06:23.99
Sara Mastros
like it do interview I don't think even read the like back, but the the table of contents.
00:06:32.15
Kimothy
Oh, I'm excited to get to the rest because it's actually really, really interesting.
00:06:33.32
Sara Mastros
That's fine. I mean, thank you. i I did write it in order to be read. like i i know people have this idea that I write books in order to sell books. But first of all, I make approximately $1.50 when somebody buys a book.
00:06:47.42
Sara Mastros
So...
00:06:47.79
Kimothy
Oh, my God.
00:06:48.98
Sara Mastros
yeah I mean, that's pretty typical. i I will tell people broadly, like mainstream traditional publishing, the author ten typically makes 10%. Yeah, I mean,
00:06:59.26
Sara Mastros
yeah um mean that's just welcome to the realities of publishing in the 21st century.
00:07:03.74
Kimothy
I don't like reality.
00:07:05.61
Sara Mastros
I mean, same. i will tell you, you know, I also run my own publishing house. So with partners, I own the Fool's Dog Tarot Company.
00:07:09.98
Kimothy
Oh, cool.
00:07:12.68
Sara Mastros
So we're a market leading producer of digital tarot decks. So if you have a digital tarot deck on your phone, it might be made. People don't always know that decks are Fool's Dog de because same way, like I don't typically know who published a book I'm reading unless I actually looked.
00:07:26.49
Sara Mastros
right But like if you have a Llewellyn deck on your phone, we made that. If you have a Llewellyn Scarabello deck on your phone, we made that.
00:10:10.49
Kimothy
Can you tell us about your magical practice?
00:10:14.17
Sara Mastros
Absolutely. um So, you know, I started off, I've been practicing for a long time, right? In some ways, like, you know, I think that all toddlers are magicians until our culture just beats it out of them.
00:10:27.19
Kimothy
Yeah.
00:10:27.77
Sara Mastros
i I used to think that, although will say when I talk with people who like run daycares, they're like, not as much as you think, Sarah. Some kids are not into that, which might be true. I don't have a ton of experience with little kids.
00:10:39.41
Sara Mastros
But by the time I was a teenager, I had gotten like pretty, so like I just never grew out of it, like many things I was supposed to grow out of. And so by a teenager, was pretty serious about it. But you know, this is like to give some context for the young people. I'm now telling a story set in like the late 80s through like mid ninety s And I live in a country. So there's really not that much in the way of resources. Like I've read everything in the public library in the witchcraft section, which is like five not very good books. Thanks.
00:11:10.46
Sara Mastros
um And I'm really like trying to find other stuff. And then I found a book called Ritual Magic by E.M. Butler, which was in the German history section, which I was looking in, which I was looking in because I was taking German class.
00:11:20.04
Kimothy
Okay. okay
00:11:22.70
Sara Mastros
I was writing a paper on German history. Right. um And so that book was really transformational for me. So that was my first introduction to Solomonic magic. Ritual Magic. It's a book I really recommend for nerds. Like it's,
00:11:39.64
Sara Mastros
a dense academic book that you gotta like be into reading nerd books to enjoy but if you like me are into reading nerd books it's a great one it's basically a history of grimoire magic and it has excerpts from a lot of different grimoires and it does a really good job of sort of like comparing structures and like how things evolved over time in different grimoires but as a magician i'm actually really glad that i started there instead of with a single complete grimoire Right. So like I didn't have the key of Solomon. I had like this excerpt from the key of Solomon. Then I had this excerpt from like the Gromorum Verum and so forth. And I had to kind of stitch together my own practice from those pieces. And then I filled in the gaps with like some Jewish prayers and I started working that. And that was amazing for me. And then that book continued to be really relevant for me when like 10 years later, I had not yet met another woman in Solomonic magic. Like even today, i think we all know that Solomonic magic has a reputation for being full of like douchey Solomon bros. Like I'm not saying all, but like hashtag not all sorcerers, but there's like a real contingent of that. You gotta like fight your way through as a young woman.
00:12:51.61
Sara Mastros
i mean, even as an old woman, I still have to fight my way through it now, but it was not, it was worse when I was 18. Right. um But I found out that E.M.
00:12:57.75
Kimothy
I'm sure.
00:12:59.05
Sara Mastros
Butler is actually Eliza Marion Butler. like Like this book was written by a woman who, by the way, i don't want to go off on a tangent, but she is so cool. Eliza Marion Butler. Like, I really recommend people look her up. Nobody knows who she is. She's amazing. You know, outside, like in our circles, people know her as this grimoire magician, but she was ah a historian. She was a British historian of Germany in the early 1920s. She wrote this really like people who aren't magicians. This is why they know her. She wrote a book called The Tyranny of Greets over Germany, which like predicted the rise of fascism in Germany based on their like fetishization of a weird, incorrect model of ancient Greece. Like she's so she was a translator in World War One. like She's super cool and I really recommend looking at her. But like for me, it was really validating when I found out that was a woman. Because again, in the 10 years since I had read that book, I had not met another woman in Salamanic Magic.
00:13:53.56
Sara Mastros
And so I do a lot of things, but I do feel that Salamanic Magic is where I really cut my teeth as a magician. like I started off in Wicca, but i just wasn't finding what I wanted there. And I don't think that's not like an indictment of all Wicca. It's just, you know, the particular like Wiccan things I was running into in the early 90s were just not doing it for me. Like I spent a lot of time being like, okay, this is cool, but I already have a perfectly good religion that I'm not practicing. So I'm not really looking for another one. i i came here for the witchcraft. Like where's the ghosts and the devils and the witchcraft? And I found it wanting. And then in Salmonic Magic, I really got that traction that I was looking for. But I think like almost everybody, like what kind of path you end up on is just sort of an accident of the way things play out. Like I'm also really into plant magic, but that's because my BFF and co-magician is now a professor of botanical medicine. And so like I learned a lot about plants around her, like being her friend.
00:14:56.59
Kimothy
I love the idea of co-magician.
00:14:59.29
Sara Mastros
Oh, for sure.
00:14:59.48
Kimothy
I thought that was really cool when I was reading that.
00:15:02.23
Sara Mastros
You know, people all the time ask me like my advice for beginning magicians, but it is to get a co-magician. Like there is no substitute for just doing magic with someone else because it really forces you to like, especially as a beginner, it's really easy to like trick yourself into thinking you are like doing magic when you are not.
00:15:27.86
Sara Mastros
Right. And similarly, it's really easy to like get dejected that it's not working. And a second person that you have to be like out loud communicating with, I feel like solves those problems. So I really think get a co-magician is by far my biggest piece of advice for big beginner magicians.
00:15:48.82
Kimothy
I think it's interesting because I have not worked with anyone until pretty recently. and now I have a group. It's not a coven.
00:15:57.07
Sara Mastros
Mm-hmm.
00:15:57.66
Kimothy
But I do work with a group of people pretty regularly. And we did do something every week, actually, together, not together together, but at the same time with the same intention.
00:16:11.66
Sara Mastros
I mean, I think that's very valuable as well, but I do think there is no substitute for in-person, like hand in hand, sharing the same air kind of condition.
00:16:19.94
Kimothy
But I’d have to leave my house
00:16:21.88
Sara Mastros
you you You do have to leave your house or entice other people to come to your house, yes. Yes.
00:16:27.53
Kimothy
that's the hard part for my brain okay that makes life complicated yeah
00:16:28.92
Sara Mastros
I mean, it's it's actually not. Like I assure you, I regret to inform you there are actually harder parts after that.
00:16:40.89
Sara Mastros
Oh, makes life challenging. not comp it's It's actually very easy. If you go ostentatiously read tarot cards in a cafe, somebody will come over and ask about them and then you have an opening to just start talking about magic.
00:16:54.49
Kimothy
Never in my life have I considered doing that.
00:16:54.65
Sara Mastros
um I mean, I guess too much of people with I'm an ostentatious attention whore who, I mean, obviously, like i as I mentioned, I get in front of a camera and razzle dazzle for a living.
00:17:07.26
Sara Mastros
So i mean I'm not saying people have to do that. I'm just saying like, it's actually not as hard to meet people as it is made out to be. I think co-magicians are valuable for everybody, but I really think their biggest value is for beginners. Like, I also encourage people with, like, an established practice to go out and meet people. But I do think that, like, it's in the beginning where I think it's most valuable.
00:18:07.80
Kimothy
I can totally see how it would be.
00:18:10.49
Sara Mastros
Which I don't think is a thing about witchcraft. I mean, that's just like an established fact about human learning. Like as a teacher, that's also what I would say about calculus is that learning it on your own from a book is the single hardest way to learn anything.
00:18:25.56
Kimothy
Wow. Just had flashbacks. Okay. Do you have any regular or consistent rituals you'll share with people?
00:18:38.24
Sara Mastros
That's a good question. i I do, although I will say most of my, like, sort of things i do all the time, i don't know how valuable they would be for other people. So I will say, like, some sort of routine. Like, I do have a pretty solid, I want to say everyday meditation practice, but if I'm being honest, like… four or five days a week and not when I'm traveling, even though that's when I should be doing it, meditation practice. But there's not much like ritual to that. It's just a pretty standard, like what I do is Vipassana insight meditation, but it's really just a silent seated meditation practice. um I have a Kabbalat Shabbat practice, like a Jewish practice, a Friday night practice. um And then I have… like a muse practice, I would say, like in my writing work, ah like I have a muse practice where I open writing sessions with an invocation of the muses. But I mean, it's, it, it's, it's not like, I don't know that I could share a ritual. I sit down and I, as well, as Hesiod teaches us, I just, I write for the muse.
00:19:46.27
Kimothy
Oh, no, I don't mean that. Just a very a vague, what you said is what I mean.
00:19:52.28
Sara Mastros
Yeah, like I write for the muses first thing and last. So the first thing I write in any writing situations, I just open up a blank page and write for the muses for, i don't know, half a page.
00:19:55.70
Kimothy
That is interesting.
00:20:02.24
Sara Mastros
And if I'm really, really blocked, like I will type out an invocation of the muses I have memorized, which is usually Hesiod's Hymn to the Muses, the beginning of the Theogony. But sometimes it's like my Orphic Hymns translation of the Orphic Hymn to the Muses.
00:20:16.78
Sara Mastros
But typically, i mean, I feel like as a professional writer, writing for the muses with somebody else's words is kind of like cheating. So unless I'm really stuck, I just write an original something, like a little ditty for the muses first thing.
00:20:32.22
Kimothy
Well, now I'm wondering how I can translate that into metalwork. Because that's what I do.
00:20:36.59
Sara Mastros
Well, I would think, I mean, in a Greek sense, I would imagine Hephaestus is the god of metalwork.
00:20:38.33
Kimothy
Like Vulcan?
00:20:42.07
Kimothy
oh
00:20:43.64
Sara Mastros
So, but but if it's like if it's like the art inspiration part, I still think that's the muses, like no matter what the medium is.
00:20:44.25
Kimothy
honey
00:20:51.83
Kimothy
Yes.
00:20:52.73
Sara Mastros
but So, and I think you just have to figure out. So like, I think my position that I have to write something original every time doesn't feel like the muse of metal work is gonna demand that of you. Right, as a writer, i feel like I'm saying like, I think you're perfectly-
00:21:04.11
Kimothy
That would be wild if they did, considering what it is that I have to do.
00:21:08.85
Sara Mastros
I think you would be perfectly legitimate to just like recite a hymn, somebody else's hymn to the muses when you start. But my instinct would be that Hephaestus is, if i if I were doing metalwork and I wanted help with metalwork, Hephaestus or some other like blacksmithy god is who I would turn to. But I don't know anything about metalwork, so.
00:21:35.90
Kimothy
I am bad at math, so everybody has their thing.
00:21:38.65
Sara Mastros
Right.
00:21:40.79
Kimothy
Who or what gave you the best advice you've ever gotten? And what was it?
00:21:46.34
Sara Mastros
Oh, well. I'm going duck your question about what it is because that doesn't feel like other people's business. But I would say the best advice I get is from my future self.
00:21:55.06
Kimothy
Fair.
00:21:58.50
Sara Mastros
So another practice I have is that I give advice to my past self. pretty regularly and that amplifies my ability to like hear advice from my future self. But that's something that I sort of always had even as a pretty young kid. I had this understanding that like future me sometimes gave advice in my head.
00:22:19.64
Kimothy
Holy moly.
00:22:20.76
Sara Mastros
Yeah, I'm a weirdo.
00:22:22.78
Kimothy
I love it.
00:22:23.79
Sara Mastros
But I do think that if you regularly get into the practice of giving advice to your past self, then that should work.
00:22:33.25
Kimothy
Huh. More things to think about and work on.
00:22:40.39
Sara Mastros
If nothing else, I think the exercise of giving your past self advice is helpful in the sense that, you know, something we're taught in math that I think does not get translated well to non math people when it's taught in like high school. Like in high school, you're taught to like check your work, but that's not what they're supposed to be telling you. What in that step, like there's an established sequence of problem solving that they're trying to teach and they're doing it badly. um It's called the Polya problem solving method. It's actually in chapter one of introduction to witchcraft. Like I just take the method and apply to witchcraft. But the essence of it is that like before you start solving a problem, you have to like understand what the problem is and you'd be shocked how many people skip that step.
00:23:19.35
Kimothy
Yes.
00:23:22.42
Sara Mastros
um And then step two, you like make a plan. Step three, you execute your plan. And then step four, this is the one that is often translated badly as like check your work. But really what they're saying is go back and now with like 20, 20 hindsight, like review what you did and be like, well, I'm never going to make that mistake a second time. Like everything should be easier and you should be better at it the second time you do it. And that's because you like rigorously went back and talked to your past self and was like, hey, this was dumb. Don't do that. This was dumb. Don't do that. This is dumb. Don't do that. Here's what you should have done. Here's what you should have done. Here's what you should have done.
And like, not in a judgmental way, just in a like, I want to learn from these because I want it to be easier next time. And so even if you don't have like the magical communication bridge that I feel like I'm getting, like I do feel like literally my future self gives me advice and I can hear it in my head because I'm a crazy person who hears voices. But like, even without that part, I think just the exercise of reviewing your life in that kind of like critical way is helpful.
00:24:26.71
Kimothy
Like an AAR.
00:24:28.23
Sara Mastros
I don't know what an AAR is.
00:24:29.59
Kimothy
After action review.
00:24:31.45
Sara Mastros
That sounds true. But I mean, based on those words, yes, after your action, you should review what you did.
00:24:36.97
Kimothy
Huh.
00:24:40.31
Kimothy
When I read, because I read that this morning, actually, when I read it, I thought, oh, it's like all the weird word problems in math class. And they're actually asking
00:24:51.54
Kimothy
Z, but you see this huge paragraph and freak out.
00:24:57.08
Sara Mastros
Yes. I'll tell you as a teacher, people's problem with word problems is never the math. It's always the reading. Like they just didn't read the question. I know this because we read the question out loud to them. Like if a student puts up their hand, it's like, I don't know how to do this problem. And you read it out loud to them, that solves like 90% of their problems with word problems. Like they just don't read it.
00:28:02.01
Kimothy
What's the biggest struggle you have in your practice?
00:28:08.41
Sara Mastros
Okay, I'm gonna first answer the biggest struggle in my business, like my witch business, and then I'll talk about struggle business.
00:28:13.18
Kimothy
Oh, yeah.
00:28:13.88
Sara Mastros
The biggest struggle in my business is my absolute hatred for rich people and my unwillingness to disguise that hatred.
00:28:20.12
Kimothy
Who are you telling because I hate them too ooh
00:28:23.42
Sara Mastros
What does Diogenes say? That in a rich man's house, there's nowhere to spit but in his face. That's that's really the problem with my business is that i have trouble keeping rich person clients and that's who typically pays bills for wizards. um In terms of my magical practice, my biggest problem, I would say, is my laziness. Though I think other people might characterize that as ADD.
00:28:47.54
Sara Mastros
I'm not great at just sitting down and doing the hard work of, like, doing the same boring thing over and over every day in a way that is sometimes required for a magical practice.
00:28:58.18
Kimothy
It's not fun.
00:28:59.74
Sara Mastros
Yeah, and I'm really here for the lulls. So, that being said,
00:29:03.51
Kimothy
Hello? how Are we the same person? Except that you can do math?
00:29:09.16
Sara Mastros
Um, well, I mean, I look, I think that this is a common problem in magic, and I think it's an overblown problem, I will say, like, I think there is a lot of emphasis on like the necessity of like disciplined daily practice in magic in a way that I actually do not believe to be true. Like,
00:29:29.40
Sara Mastros
Like there's also this emphasis on that in like the teaching of mathematics, which is also fundamentally not true. Like rote drilling is not the correct way for humans to learn things. That's not how mother nature designed our brains to work.
00:29:42.54
Sara Mastros
Like humans learn best through play and through like ecstatic experience and through traumatic experience. And so like just... you know, live a big life and do big magic and sometimes it fails all around you, i think is a better way to learn. But there are things that simply require like hard work, which I do, right? I mean, I translate ancient hymns from the Greek. I translate long lost grimoires from the Hebrew. It's not like I can't chain myself to a desk and do hard work, but that is the part I struggle with the most.
00:30:24.24
Kimothy
I just don't like doing things that aren't fun in some way.
00:30:27.06
Sara Mastros
I mean, same. And here's the thing. I say this in the book that like for beginners, that's totally okay. Just do the fun stuff. But like eventually, like the beginning of learning is on the other side of play, but the like deep learning, there is hard work between you and that. And if you want to like really advance in your practice, eventually you're going to have to do that. But don't, I think people let, yeah, that's not, like I agree.
00:30:50.23
Kimothy
Not even just magic, just anything, even podcasting. I'm trying to learn terrible things for podcasting and I'm not having a good time.
00:30:57.63
Sara Mastros
I really think that like learning magic is fundamentally not that different than learning anything else. Now there are other pieces, right? And so we're talking about like the difference between magic and witchcraft. Like when I'm talking now about learning magic, like there are parts of it that are learned the same way you learn other things, but there are other parts that are like about internal ignition of witch fire that you can't really learn by chaining yourself to a desk. Like there are ways to, like many people are born with their witch fire ignited. They're just like weird little kids. I was born dead under a caull, like, Like I've been a weirdo the whole time, right? Like I've almost died a couple of times, but like it like almost dying and coming back is a traditional way to, as we would say, you can't see my scare quote fingers here, but like get witched, like ignite your witch fire. But there are lots of other ways as well. Like many kinds of initiation are getting witched, going to the crossroads and making a deal with the devil is a very traditional way to get witched.
00:31:58.81
Sara Mastros
And like those things, I don't really think hard work helps that much. Like you just have to be brave and just do it. Because it's like a once and like you had this transformative experience, but it's scary because there's no going back. Like you don't really know what you're signing up for in initiation. Like you're going to come out of it different than you went in and exactly how you're going to be different. It's hard to know.
Right, and so the older we get, hopefully for me, the older I've gotten, and certainly the more like powerful I've gotten and the more like satisfied with my life I am, the less willing I am to go out to the crossroads and burn my whole life down and start over. That being said, I am planning on doing that in June. Like, so in June, my expectation is that I'm moving to Wales. um I have this cycle where like every nine years I burn my life down and start over. And now that I know that about myself, I can kind of do that in a planned way. But I am like, this will be my whatever that is, sixth or seventh go round.
00:33:08.48
Kimothy
Phoenix-hood.
00:33:09.27
Sara Mastros
I guess fifth, it'll be my fifth time, like burning my life down and starting over. And I expect that to go very well. But there is a like, I understand why people who have a whole complicated, very well established life with like a home and a family and kids and a career and yada, yada, yada. Like I understand why they don't want to do that. Which is why I keep doing it young and doing it early.
00:33:30.96
Kimothy
Well, I'm excited to hear. I'm excited to hear what you're I'm excited to hear what it's like.
00:33:33.33
Sara Mastros
Like just blow your life off when you're young.
00:33:37.37
Kimothy
What happens.
00:33:37.46
Sara Mastros
ah yeah I'm excited to tell everybody about it.
00:33:40.18
Kimothy
Yay!
00:33:40.57
Sara Mastros
You know, it's not as scary as I'm making it out to be. My younger brother has lived in England for like 25 years. Like I'm moving to a town where I already have a friend. Like it's, I'm making it sound like I'm brave, but I assure you I'm just not.
00:33:54.82
Sara Mastros
So I plan things pretty effectively.
00:33:57.66
Kimothy
Hmm.
00:34:00.82
Kimothy
I would like you to tell me about your favorite meal, what you had, what, why it was your favorite, who was there and why you ended up eating it at that time.
00:34:10.71
Sara Mastros
Oh, golly. That's a hard question.
00:34:17.08
Sara Mastros
All right. ah So some context for this. i um I was very close with my parents. Like I know a lot of people did not have good parents, but I did. My parents were killed in a car accident in 2012.
00:34:31.90
Sara Mastros
So that's like the context for this answer. So it's definitely gonna be a Thanksgiving dinner at my parents' house. I'd have to think about like which one they kind of all blend together in my memory. But you know, i grew up like my mom's Jewish, my dad came up Christian, but was a pretty militant atheist sort of softening into an agnostic as he got older. um And so like, I think a lot of interfaith families, like the December holidays could be a little tense.
00:34:59.23
Kimothy
Mm-hmm.
00:34:59.90
Sara Mastros
Right. But Thanksgiving, that was the one that like my parents hosted. Right. So like Passover, we went to Aunt Sally's like Christmas, we went Aunt Kathy's. But like Thanksgiving was the one that my parents did. And it was just very much about like family togetherness. And we pretty routinely had like 20 or 25 people at the table. Often from both sides of the family, which was like the only time those two families really mingled, like my mom's family, and my dad's family. um And yeah, so like also like my mother, bless her heart, was like not a great cook, but Thanksgiving, like she actually did really well. um Like she was really proud of that meal and other people brought food as well. So I know that's maybe not like a sexy sorcery answer. Like, oh, this one time I slept with the devil at the crossroads, which is also true. I've also done that. But I have to say like those family Thanksgivings, especially when I was like an adult, There wasn't, you know, I didn't have a lot of time as an adult before my parents died. But those times when I was already an adult and I had my own life and so like I didn't see my family. It's not like when i was high school and was living with them, right? So like those Thanksgiving dinners as an adult were like everybody got together, one of those.
00:36:17.11
Kimothy
What was your favorite thing to eat?
00:36:19.73
Sara Mastros
Like my favorite, oh, definitely the stuffing that came from inside the turkey. I would eat bread stuffing laden with turkey grease literally three times a day every day if I didn't think it would kill me. Like, I understand that is not a food a human being can like survive one. It's terrible for you, but that is definitely my favorite.
00:36:42.23
Kimothy
Are you a gravy person?
00:36:44.41
Sara Mastros
Yes.
00:36:47.20
Sara Mastros
Yes, my dad made the gravy.
00:36:49.28
Kimothy
oo
00:36:49.66
Sara Mastros
Actually, my dad is who taught me how to make gravy. It was like the only thing he ever cooked.
00:36:56.30
Kimothy
That's cool.
00:36:59.54
Kimothy
What's something you wish was discussed more in the magical community?
00:37:09.46
Sara Mastros
Something I've been thinking about a lot. Okay. I mean, a lot of things and there are things that I just think should be discussed in every community, equity and the role of the corporate industrial hegemony and ruining everybody's life and blah, blah, blah. But the things that are like specifically about magic, something I've been thinking about a lot.
in magic is that like for the entire history of the English language, ah we've really like burned to death anybody who talked about magic out loud. So we really have a relative to other languages, a very poor technical vocabulary for discussing magic. And so I think like we get bogged down in these questions about like what's a witch and what's a magician. And like I think those conversations can be interesting, but like one, i feel like a lot of people have them without any kind of like historical understanding of what those words meant more than 15 years ago, which is not how words work. um But also I think we don't talk enough about how like our lack of a vocabulary for things like
00:38:14.38
Sara Mastros
puts us in these silos where like each little kind of magic has its own technical vocabulary. And it's very hard to talk outside of that without having to like make sure everybody's on the same page about what words mean. And I would like us to talk more about the fact that that is like a problem about the English language, that like many languages don't have that issue. We just don't have words for this in English. And similarly, we end up like importing words with then like some complicated, like cultural appropriation baggage along with an importation like shaman. But that's because we actually don't have an English word for that because we murdered all our shamans for the entire history of the English language. So like, there's not really good words for things. And I think that's a problem that needs addressing. And also like a thing that I think if we talked more about that, it would really allow us to do a lot more like sort of natural kinds of learning from each other that I think are easier to do in other languages and in other cultures.
00:39:19.94
Kimothy
I love this.
00:39:23.13
Sara Mastros
ah Well, thank you. i I, you know, I do a lot of like translation magic, like both the translating of magic from other languages, like books of magic, but also like the notion of translation of like taking ideas and changing them, of like the transmutation of ideas. Like a lot of my magical works are centers in that space. So these are just things I think about a lot.
00:39:51.02
Kimothy
I actually read that this morning too, so it's exciting to actually talk to you and hear you talk about it.
00:39:58.14
Sara Mastros
I'll admit I don't entirely remember exactly what I said in that book, so hopefully I'm saying the same things.
00:40:03.80
Kimothy
It is.
00:40:06.97
Kimothy
Can you compare the first spell you've ever done, compare that with the most recent one?
00:40:14.82
Sara Mastros
Hmm. Well... I'm not sure I know the first spell I ever did because I feel like, like I was saying, I think that as kids, there's a lot of kind of like wishing and things that I would categorize as spellcraft, even though we don't always. But like a spell very early in my magical career was my BFF. The person who's actually a professor of botanical medicine. I mentioned her earlier. She and I went to school together. So we're probably, let me think, we're freshmen in high school in this story. So I think we're, probably 13 about to be 14 would be my guess. And we had a trigonometry midterm. The reason she and I became such good friends is because we were both a year ahead in math. And that just meant that we had like, no the way that shook out in our high school schedule meant that she and I basically had all of our classes together because we were on like an unusual schedule from other people in our grade. So we had this trigonometry midterm coming up that we did not want to take. And in it's February in this story. Like I want to close like, and so we, we, we did a spell for snow. And so I had just gotten into witchcraft qua witchcraft. And I think the only book I think I'd read at that point was Buckland's big blue book of Bibbidi-Bobbidi-Boo, which I think is maybe actually called like encyclopedia of witchcraft or,
00:41:40.18
Kimothy
That's got some fancy name.
00:41:40.76
Sara Mastros
introduction to witchcraft some other boring title just like my book has a super boring title that nobody can remember um i think it's called like buckland's complete guide to witchcraft or something like but older people will definitely know what i mean when i say buckland's big blue book of bibbidi-bobby like it's a eight and a half by eleven book with a blue cover i'm sure the new editions look different
00:42:01.07
Kimothy
She's thick.
00:42:02.01
Sara Mastros
Yeah, it's a big book it's a You know, look, would I recommend that book today? It would not be at the top of my list. But like of books I could have landed on in 1982, it was like a pretty solid choice. 1984 probably is when I read that book. i'm not sure. Anyway, that was more or less the only book I'd written. So I sort of constructed a spell out of that, which was basically like a candle wishing spell, right? A pretty straightforward... So we like went through my mom's candle closet and found like a snowflake shaped peppermint scented candle that I am 100% sure was a Christmas gift from my family. And that was like the least Christmassy thing they could give my Jewish mother. Anyway, it was in the back of the closet. i was like, oh, this is perfect. And we did that. And we called, I don't know, some snow gods because that's how I'd learned to do witchcraft was you always had to have one he god and one she god, which was I don't, whatever. That's how I learned to do it at the time. And, but I don't think either of us really thought it was going to work. So we like lit the candle and then we danced around it, whooping, i think naked, like 13, like teenage girls do, because we were also learning witchcraft from like movies. And that just seemed like how you did it. And we both imagined like piles and piles and piles of snow, because I don't think we really thought it was going to work.
00:43:19.00
Sara Mastros
So we kind of overshot. And so she stayed the night, we or she stayed for dinner, we watched Star Trek, and then she went home and it still wasn't snowing. But by the time we woke up, there was like six inches of snow. It didn't stop snowing for like a week and a half. um I believe that to be called the blizzard of 1994. And I'm not saying we did that, but it does did feel like we did that. So i' would say the biggest difference between then and now is I do expect it to work. But that means, honestly, sometimes i like wish I did that less because I get real in my head about like, oh, I better be exactly correct about what I wish for. It's going monkey paw. on me. And like, I guess that monkey pawed, I mean, i i don't I don't claim credit for that blizzard. But if I did, i guess I'd feel pretty guilty about it because the entire East Coast shut down and like, people got hurt.
00:44:13.48
Kimothy
I'm trying to remember where I was that at that then, but I don't remember where I was in 94.
00:44:14.39
Sara Mastros
one
00:44:18.07
Sara Mastros
I think it was true. It might've been early March. I don't really remember. It was definitely my freshman year in high school, which feels like it should be 1994, but I'd have to maybe look at a count and conjure some exact dates, but there was a giant blizzard.
00:44:26.36
Kimothy
Yeah. Oh, wait, and I remember. I remember where I was. Okay. that i just I just needed to do that.
00:44:32.05
Sara Mastros
I'm also going to say for young people that like weather prediction wasn't what it is now. So like we didn't like now I think that kind of blizzard, you know that that was going to happen for a couple days in advance, but that was not the case then.
00:44:44.47
Kimothy
Yeah.
00:44:48.38
Sara Mastros
Like there was a chance it would snow. That's why we were working for snow. Right? Like there was an expectation that like it might snow that this was within the realm of possibility. So yeah, I would say that now the biggest difference is that I tend to get really fussy about that like first step, like understand the problem. Like I think many people skip that step too much, but I will say that I know me and I do perhaps have a tendency to like overthink that step in a way that, I just like give up and don't do magic at all sometimes. I mean, there's also differences with like a lot of technical proficiency, like my ability to get exactly what I want. Like I know I'm better at it than I used to be, but from a witch fire standpoint.Like the difference, the essential difference between witchcraft and magic, in my opinion, is that magic is about the like application of technical skill, technical knowledge and skills, magic names, secret formulas, you match the right color to the right gemstone to the right day, yada, yada, yada, right? And that gives you a much more precise ability to channel power.
00:46:03.77
Sara Mastros
Right? And it also lets you do magic without having to flash that power up from your own witch fire, which long-term is not physically very good for you. Right? But you're a witch when you can just make stupid spells work. Like on a technical level, that candle spell I did, looking at it now, I'm like, oh honey, like you are a good witch. Like she like when I look at like past me and like past... the friend who I'm going to call Deb, but that's not her name, right? Like when I look at us, I'm like, oh, you guys' this heart is in the right place. And you clearly have some like native skill for like designing a spell, but this is garbage. Like the spell is terrible.
00:46:42.94
Kimothy
You kind of lucked into it.
00:46:43.27
Sara Mastros
Let me just cross this whole thing out and fix it for you.
00:46:44.31
Kimothy
Hmm.
00:46:47.32
Sara Mastros
Right? But, you know, teen girls who are witches flash a lot of witch fire. And that part, the like, the part of magic that is about like being a witch, like pushing power. I think sometimes we don't talk about enough. and And I understand why, because there's, there's a way for that conversation to go wrong where you're just like, well, you're a witch or you're not. And if you're not like, you're just a muggle and fuck you. Like it's easy for that conversation to take that turn, which I don't think is true or necessary. But so I think that's why like a lot of witch educators don't talk about it as much. But I do think that like brute force application of witch fire is a pretty solid magical technique. And as a teenager, that's really all I was ever doing. But it's exhausting and physically bad for you and lacks precision. So you end up with like a blizzard when all you wanted was a day off school.
00:49:37.05
Kimothy
What two people have had the biggest influence on your practice?
00:49:43.00
Sara Mastros
Hmm. Probably that friend I mentioned before would be the first one.
00:49:49.05
Sara Mastros
And the second one gonna say is probably my godmother Caroline Kenner, who really like...
00:50:00.47
Sara Mastros
She does a kind of magic that is typically called like shamanic trance journey. And that's not necessarily like, like a sort of trance journey, out of body journey work that i was sort of naturally doing before her.
00:50:16.09
Sara Mastros
but I didn't really even understand that's what I was doing, much less like know how I was doing it. So I feel like that part of my work, like that trance journey part, she really opened up for me. But like her big influence was just about like our genuine relationship more so than like any individual specific, like the people who've been the biggest influence on me were not like because I read their book, in which case, I guess it would be Eliza, Marianne, Butler and,
00:50:51.32
Sara Mastros
Pythagoras, perhaps. But like the people who've had the biggest influence on my practice were co-magicians rather than teachers or authors or anything like that.
00:51:03.38
Kimothy
I like that.
00:51:04.22
Sara Mastros
Particularly because like, um you know, if you're learning from a book, it's really, i think all of us have like kinds of magic that we're kind of into rather than other kinds. Like we all have a type. Right, but working with co-magicians, I find that I do things that I personally would not have done. So like, I don't dislike plant magic or anything, but the fact that I wrote a book, like the big book of magical incense, that's all about that friend I mentioned before. Like, she's the one who like really, got me to understand the relationship between like ecology and phytochemistry and like the magical virtues of plants. And she didn't do that by like teaching it to me. She just did that by like, I lived with her while she was in witch doctor school.
00:51:49.31
Sara Mastros
She went to medical school to be a naturopath and we were living together at that time. So I just like, Learned a lot about plant medicine. And she's also a witch. So like, even though she wasn't maybe learning the witchcraft part explicitly in witch doctor school, like she was definitely learning about plants and how they impact and in a way that like I picked up. And similarly, like my godmother, like has relationships with spirits that i personally wouldn't necessarily, like Freya is not a goddess I would necessarily feel particularly called to, but like, because Caroline has that relationship, I sort of piggyback into that in that way. And that's, that's, I think why i would say co-magicians it's because they like kind of force you out of your comfort zone a little bit.
00:52:33.61
Kimothy
I love hearing about relationships and how they affect the stuff that you don't wouldn't necessarily think they would.
00:52:40.05
Sara Mastros
I think a lot of people who, it's interesting because with the development of social media, like it's really easy to like build this parasocial relationship with someone that you do not actually, and then it's entirely one way.
00:52:50.75
Kimothy
Mm hmm.
00:52:53.18
Sara Mastros
But I think people don't understand the extent to which like those of us who, I don't know, go on podcasts and do this, we like all know each other. Like there's a lot of common, like I mentioned BJ before, but like when I say like he's who I would talk to about this, he does write about it. But I also mean like he and I just talk about it because we're people who have like actual human relationships or like other co-magicians that I have. And I think, yeah.
00:53:21.08
Kimothy
Yeah, you quoted Kat, Cat Heath. And I loved that.
00:53:26.35
Sara Mastros
Yeah. I mean, quote, Yes, I would imagine I quote lots of people in that book. I will say Cat Heath, I only like Facebook know her. That is not a person I know.
00:53:35.19
Kimothy
Me too.
00:53:35.90
Sara Mastros
I mean, i'm I'm sure they're lovely, but I don't actually know that person very well. But maybe I will soon.
00:53:47.16
Kimothy
Do you remember a time when someone was really kind to you and will you share it?
00:54:00.12
Sara Mastros
I'm trying to think of one that's like not too personal and also witch adjacent. Oh, OK, so I was at some magic convention. Honestly, in my head, they all kind of like those hotel cabinets all kind of blur together in my memory. Probably sacred space. ah like right after my parents died. So like like a couple, I guess that's like six months after my parents died. And I was in a class, I don't even remember what the class was. Somebody said something that like triggered my grief, right? And I like ducked out of class and like, was trying to like, like went in the bathroom, like stopped crying, like got my shit together. Cause I didn't want to openly weep in public because I don't know, internalized misogyny. um And there was a bench, there was like only one place to sit in the hallway. And there was this old lady on it. And I was like, is it okay if I sit next to you? was a little tight because I'm a bigger person. And so was she. And like, she could tell I was upset. And she like, just asked like, hey, are are you okay? And I like,
00:55:00.63
Sara Mastros
lost it a little bit and she just gave the most beautiful kind compassionate answer i was thinking at that time about i don't know how to explain how this was caught up in my grief but it was but at that time i was still teaching high school i was thinking about quitting to do i guess this that i'm doing now but it was still not a very well formed idea And like the thing about teaching I loved is, you know, you get to see you're making a very immediate impact in people's lives and kids are not jaded adults. So when you impact their life, you can tell. And that happens pretty regularly as a teacher. You like. You were the kind thing that they're going to remember 20 years ago, like it's pretty easy to do that as a teacher because kids are pretty easy to impact. And I I was worried that my work now wouldn't have that same level of like making the world better that teaching did. And that was basically the gist of the conversation. She was so kind and so compassionate. And then, i don't know, it was conference, like the next class started, and i think we both shuffled off to somewhere. And I was telling that story and I like pointed her out to my friend, Alison Tchaikovsky. And Allie was like, you know, that's Dolores Ashcroft Nowicki. And I was like, oh, i extremely did not know that. And I'm glad I didn't because I feel like I would have been a little like,
00:56:17.99
Kimothy
clammed up
00:56:18.20
Sara Mastros
And girly in a way that like wouldn't have been so genuine. But that really, I don't know that she, I don't tell the story a lot. So I don't even know if she knows, like I've met her many times since. She might know who I am. I don't know, but I'm sure she doesn't remember this incident, which was like, you know, grinning anyway, so that's a story.
00:56:35.70
Kimothy
my heart you're the first one I've asked that question to and I'm so glad
00:56:42.01
Sara Mastros
Oh, good. Yeah. It's a good question. Like you should ask, I would like to hear other people's answers to it. So you should ask that if you're okay.
00:56:48.98
Kimothy
Well, this is next year's questions, though. It will be asked to more people. And speaking of, now that you've seen what it's like to talk to me, who do you think would be fun to have on the show?
00:56:53.18
Sara Mastros
all right
00:57:01.05
Kimothy
Who would you want to hear answer these questions?
00:57:03.62
Sara Mastros
Halo Quinn, who's a storyteller, so i think they'd have like really good answers for these questions um bj swain i think would be interesting because he's got a lot of cool stuff to say about like
00:57:05.43
Kimothy
Yes.
00:57:19.70
Sara Mastros
the nature of being a witch that I think is cool. Who else has a really good interview? Denis Poisson from Foolish Fish.
00:57:29.94
Sara Mastros
He doesn't do a lot of interviews, so I don't know if he would, but I would, I think he, i just, I always think that he tells such like genuine, like wholesome, like, A lot of people, a lot of my colleagues, like, I'm not complaining, but they seem really like assholes sometimes.
00:57:53.21
Sara Mastros
And that's cool if they want to be like, I get that brand, but I feel like Denis is like wholesome in a way that I think people think I am and I'm not.
00:57:53.73
Kimothy
Yeah.
00:58:02.96
Sara Mastros
So maybe he's not as wholesome as I think he is either. But I really think, I think he takes very seriously his role as like a moral exemplar in a way that I would like to see him answer these kinds of questions.
00:58:17.62
Sara Mastros
So that's who comes immediately to mind.
00:58:19.68
Kimothy
Awesome. I've actually had Halo on the show, but I didn't ask her the kindness question. Maybe I'll just email her and ask.
00:58:26.06
Sara Mastros
Irene Glass, I think would also be good.
00:58:27.80
Kimothy
oh yes.
00:58:29.78
Sara Mastros
She's, she, I think, yeah, she has a very, she has like a fascinating life that like, I think has a lot of cool stories in it. Like, she was in the military and she's a preacher. She's like the head, the frontliner of a rock band.
00:58:48.38
Kimothy
Here for all of that.
00:58:49.43
Sara Mastros
so I feel like she probably has a much more interesting life to talk about than I do. I think of my life as extremely boring. I mean, I like it that way.
00:58:58.36
Kimothy
i I do not.
00:59:00.06
Sara Mastros
hey I assure you, I really like my boring life.
00:59:01.81
Kimothy
I think it sounds really neat.
00:59:03.29
Sara Mastros
Like, i'm I'm a hobbit, and when a wizard comes knocking on my door, I'm like, no, thank you. No adventures here. you help me again? And then I go back to my meat pie and book, and that's my perfect life, so.
00:59:17.62
Kimothy
Is there anything else you wanted to bring up? Anything going on with you? Anything you want to talk about? Anything i didn't ask? Any questions you had for me?
00:59:49.25
Sara Mastros
Well, yes, I have a lot of interesting things that I would like to talk about, but first I'm going to shake my begging bowl and do a little advertisement, if that's okay. So commercial break.
00:59:56.75
Kimothy
Heck yeah.
00:59:57.59
Sara Mastros
Introduction to Witchcraft, 13 Lessons in the Practice of Magic is my new book. It's been out for... That's actually a complicated question. Everywhere except Amazon. It came out October 28th, but for some reason, Amazon kept it in book jail. until November 18th, and it's still in book jail in Europe, but anywhere except Amazon, it is available everywhere books are sold. um There's also a companion course. So the book is really structured as like I've been teaching a course on the introduction to witchcraft for many, many years now, first in person and now online. You can find it at witchlessons.com. The new semester will start January 4th. And this is really the textbook for it. And certainly If you're the kind of person like me, if you're a nerd who wants to sit at a desk and learn shit out of a book, I wrote a book for you. But if you are not that person, I also teach a class, which is a lot more like interactive and videos and like, I don't know, for people who don't want to hunch at a desk over a book, which I appreciate is a lot of people. And even I would rather learn in person from a fun teacher than from a book. So classes start January 4th. You can get all the information at witchlessons.com. I also have a course on working with the dead. We're gonna do lesson three next week, but it's not too late to catch up. So you get, for any of my courses, when you sign up, you get all the back videos, which usually means two or three like I've taught it two or three different times one video, plus you get invitations to every live teaching coming up and you keep that forever. So like, it's not like you take the class once and then you would have to buy it again. Like you just can do it forever until you tell me to take you off the mailing list, basically. In terms of live stuff, I have an event in London coming up January 26th. maybe 28th, uh-oh. Well, maybe by the time this comes out, we'll have that in the little info box under this event.
01:01:52.18
Kimothy
Yep.
01:01:53.24
Sara Mastros
um And then i will be at Convocation in Detroit ah the weekend of February 21st, which is also my 48th birthday.
01:02:02.27
Kimothy
Yay.
01:02:02.42
Sara Mastros
um And then in March, I may or may not be at Paganacon. It is not quite decided yet, but if you would like me to be at Paganacon, you should write to Paganacon and ask them to pay for part of my hotel room.
01:02:15.45
Sara Mastros
which would make it easier for me to do that.
01:02:16.83
Kimothy
That's how you get people to show up where you want them to, everyone. You offer to pay.
01:02:21.70
Sara Mastros
I mean, I'm doing my best. It's just, it's a lot of travel and inexpensive.
01:02:24.57
Kimothy
Yeah, but I mean, people don't, I don't think people realize that if they, I don't think people realize that's how they get to see who they want to see.
01:02:25.08
Sara Mastros
It's not expensive. Like understand. Oh yeah, for sure. If you ever, if you want an author at an event, you hassle, like don't hassle the author who honestly like, has holding marginal power over that, like call the event and be like, you should pay these people.
01:02:40.60
Kimothy
probably broke. Yeah.
01:02:45.09
Sara Mastros
Like I will come to this event if this person is there.
01:02:45.72
Kimothy
Yeah.
01:02:48.34
Sara Mastros
And that's, I mean, that those are all like the dirty professional secrets of how this works behind the scenes. like Like places that are close to me, like if I don't have to pay for a hotel, i love events. So things that I can just go to in a day and come back.
01:03:02.07
Sara Mastros
like I will, you don't need to pay me to do those, right? But if you want me to go somewhere where I have to like rent a car and then pay for a hotel room, I need to be able to make enough to do that. And I make $1.50 for every book sold. So I can't do that with book sales.
01:03:18.65
Sara Mastros
Me or anybody else. Like I just like capitalism ruins everything. And this is the way it ruins like professional witchcrafting.
01:03:29.40
Kimothy
So everybody call or don't call anyone. Oh my God. But email them.
01:03:33.43
Sara Mastros
oh yeah hi Please don't, please don't, like if the, please don't ring off the hook the organizer.
01:03:38.74
Kimothy
Don't call anyone, but email them and say, Hey, this is, this is what we want.
01:03:38.83
Sara Mastros
Right.
01:03:43.47
Kimothy
Everyone or whoever organizer guy person.
01:03:45.21
Sara Mastros
I mean, if you want to hear me, but also whoever you do want to hear. I mean, at this point it's too late. Like it takes a full year. So like I'm already registered for Paganicon. I don't know if I can actually go could do that teaching, but like, you know, you have to tell them a year in advance who you want to see next year, basically.
01:04:04.66
Kimothy
So the last two things that I ask of guests, thing number one is recommend something. It doesn't have to be witch related at all. Just something cool that you ran across this week or month that you would, when you meet up with your friends, you're like, hey, you know what you should try? Blah, blah, blah.
01:08:04.62
Sara Mastros
But I only get one, that's hard.
01:08:06.23
Kimothy
Oh, no. no
01:08:07.86
Sara Mastros
Okay, well, if I can have a bunch, here's a bunch of things that I'm excited about right now.
01:08:08.06
Kimothy
No. Yeah. I love this.
01:08:14.00
Sara Mastros
There's a TV show called Be Foreigners. It's, I think, from Norway.
01:08:17.75
Kimothy
Oh,
01:08:20.60
Sara Mastros
it was on HBO for a while. I'm not going lie. I don't even know where you can find it. I'm like watching it on a friend's plex. But it's amazing. It's about this cop who is tasked with figuring out what's going on because people from Other time periods are just like showing up in, I guess it's Oslo. I'm not even sure where it's set. It's it's really weird and cool. A book that I recommend, a fiction book, is called Eternal Life by Dara Horn. It's so cool. It's about a woman who's been living since… um i guess like the first century ce guess a little earlier probably the very beginning of late antiquity so i guess it's it's the time of rabbi hillel so yeah i guess it's like the last century bce e is about the time period of this um and but it's set primarily in the modern day and with her like sort of navigating the consequences of what it means to be immortal, I would say, is what that book is about. It's really, really cool. Let me see if I can come up with a witch book. I've really been enjoying story. I think, I feel bad that I don't know the exact title of this book. I think it's called Storytelling for Magicians or maybe Storytelling for Magic. That's by Halo Quinn, who I mentioned before. um As a writer, I really, really liked it, but I also think it's really great. It just talks about like the role of story in magic. So I don't want people to think like you have to be like a writer or like a professional storyteller like Halo is to like make use of that book. like Storytelling is a natural human activity. And just like I am certainly not a professional singer, I can still sing and it still works, even if I'm not a very good singer. i think storytelling and magic is similar to that. So that's a book I really recommend.
01:10:36.74
Kimothy
I part of the, one of the things I really love about about this podcast is that people come on and tell me stories. So i love a story.
01:10:43.18
Sara Mastros
I agree. And then, all right, I'm going to give one more recommendation. i don't know, you can cut this if you want, but I am not trying to doom speak right now.
01:10:55.16
Sara Mastros
But like when I say things like the weather is broken or the corporate industrial hegemony is literally ruining the world, I i really mean that very literally. And I encourage everyone to like,
01:11:10.87
Sara Mastros
be looking ahead over the next couple of years and understanding how that plays out in your life and expecting the world to be very different than it is now and thinking about like what weird new ways of being can we do? Like what do lives look like that actually work in the world in which we actually live and the consequences of the world in which we live?
01:11:36.31
Sara Mastros
So that's like my last recommendation as a course of action. And I will say that there is,
01:11:44.47
Sara Mastros
From my reading of history, and I think everyone else's reading of history, the only thing that matters in the continued survival and thriving of human beings is their relationships to other human beings and their access, their reliable access to clean drinking water.
01:11:59.95
Kimothy
Yes!
01:12:03.96
Sara Mastros
And if a community has a solid community where people actually leave their house and talk to each other and be together and reliable access to clean drinking water, then that community will survive. And anyone who is in a community that doesn't have that won't. And I'm not saying that's gonna happen next year, but that is the long-term reading of history of humans. Like that's what it means to be human on planet earth.
01:12:28.15
Sara Mastros
And I think we live in a world where it would be wise for people to be considering how that plays out for them.
01:12:33.32
Kimothy
And fight every data center that wants to open near your home. Tucson
01:12:37.50
Sara Mastros
Yes, yes, you should definitely be working to build the world you want.
01:12:40.22
Kimothy
did it, y'all.
01:12:43.19
Kimothy
You can do it. Tucson just did it with the blue, whatever the hell that shit was.
01:12:45.46
Sara Mastros
Yes. You absolutely can. Like, you should absolutely be clearly envisioning the world you want and fighting for it. But you should also be ready to thrive in other worlds.
01:13:00.95
Kimothy
The second thing is, even though you've already been doing it, so you don't have to if you don't want to because you've told me um a lot already, please tell me a story.
01:15:06.62
Kimothy
My favorite kind to hear is one that you tell when you get around people and you say remember when and then everyone knows the story. But I also understand that sometimes those are often those are personal or a story that you really love from childhood that you heard being told.
01:15:28.98
Sara Mastros
I'm going tell a story from childhood that I didn't really like, but I'm going to tell it better.
01:15:35.95
Kimothy
Yay.
01:15:36.47
Sara Mastros
So for people who are listening, as we're recording this, it's Monday. It's the afternoon of Monday, December the eighth And next Monday, next Sunday evening, I believe Hanukkah starts. So I'm going to talk about the Hanukkah story, right? um Which I'm going to imagine there are two camps of listeners and one of them heard the Hanukkah story every year for their entire life. And other people do not know the Hanukkah story. So I'm going to tell it, I'm going to preface this by, Like... like The telling of this story is an important sort of cultural ritual for Jews and different Jews are going to tell it differently. And that's the nature of oral storytelling. Right. And that's why in Judaism, you know, we're called a people of the book. And that's a real thing. Like that book, we're into that. But I think there is this misunderstanding that that's all there is. But Judaism is a living tradition with a complex oral narrative history that I think every Jew would agree is the important part. right that like I think non-Jews have this idea that Judaism is like a weird kind of like fundamentalist Torah book cult, but that's not really what it is.
01:16:52.35
Sara Mastros
right So I'm gonna tell this story and i'm gonna tell this story in a way that many rabbis would not approve of, but they would very much approve of the idea that we're all allowed to tell it different.
01:16:58.76
Kimothy
Oh.
01:17:02.47
Sara Mastros
In fact, we're all commanded specifically to tell it in our own way. So that's a big buffer to this with like some cultural context. The other piece of context you need to understand is that my mom's my mom was Jewish and my father was Greek. And Hanukkah is a story about war between the Jews and the Greeks. And that's a complicated story for me and also for a lot of political reasons. So the basics of the story are this, that ah Judea, what we would now call Israel, the land of Israel, is at this point under Israel. It's in the process of being conquered by Greece, right? Both in a military way and more broadly in a like culturally colonizing way, right? And specifically the city of Jerusalem. This is a story about like the siege of the city of Jerusalem, right? um And how we lost that fight. Right. So like, I know that a lot of holidays are like, yeah, this wonderful thing happened. The Jewish holidays are often like, oh, this terrible thing happened, but wait, well something good will come out of it.
01:18:07.16
Kimothy
But you survived.
01:18:09.69
Sara Mastros
That's the general like tone, I would say of Jewish ritual storytelling. Right. So. trying to make this story short. So Jerusalem is conquered, right? And the temple is defiled, right? Like the holy temple in a way that I think Westerners don't fully understand because like none of, most of us, I understand that there are some, I think Mormonism has like a notion of a temple temple and not just like a building where you do your religious stuff, like a synagogue or a church, right? But a place where God lives in a way that God does not live in other places. But that's that's a typical notion. And pagans, I think, are very familiar with it conceptually, but I still think that most people in the West don't really get what that thing is because they've never really been in one of those things. So if you, I encourage you to find them, like they do exist, right? So there are Hindu temples in the United States that are, typically open visitors you can go visit. And you can sort of see like what that style of temple worship is. And the temple in Jerusalem is that kind. It's a place where like God lives there in a special way that they do not live elsewhere, right? um And that's been not destroyed, but defiled, right? the They're stabling their horses there, I believe, like bad, bad vibes. They fucked up our temple vibes, right? But afterwards we finally defeat them, right? And we've got our temple back. And there's an eternal light. So part of Jewish temple practice, which is something that I do a lot in relationship to like an ancestor altar, but I do it in other altars as well, is an eternal flame, right? So before the candle goes out, you've lit another one. There's always a candle lit there.
01:19:53.97
Sara Mastros
That kind of practice isn't called eternal flame practice. It's pretty central in even modern Jewish synagogues, but particularly in the ancient Jewish temple practice, right? There's this… magic lamp, basically. um And it's close. There's a lot of complex planetary magic actually wrapped up in that temple candelabrum that like listeners might like magician listeners will be interested in that connection. But I think it's a little too deep to go into in the middle of this story. But there's a cool magic lamp in this story and you should look it up, but it's not that relevant. I guess it is about this. There's a magic lamp. You don't need to know all the details of how a magic lamp works. Right. But you have to keep it fed. It's an oil lamp. Right. And you can only feed it like this very special kind of like sacred consecrated oil that takes a long time to make. So they get the temple back and they they want to relight this eternal light. But they only can find like half a jar of oil, of the special consecrated oil, and they can't make it fast enough. They're going to run out of oil before they can make it. Right. And so there's like this long debate about like, should we wait? to light it, like do we light it right away even knowing that this eternal flame is gonna go out? Should we feed it impure oil? Blah, blah, blah, blah, right? They're having this whole conversation, but they also send a messenger to another temple nearby, right? Where they have like a stash, a lesser temple, but that has its own priest and has its own like stash of holy oil. Right. And but they have to wait to get it right. they decide to just light the lamp and pray to God that this there will be a miracle. And somehow they will figure it out.
01:21:40.41
Sara Mastros
Like they're not going to plan for doom. that Like they're going to run out of oil. Their eternal light's going to go out. That's a problem. Like a magico-religious problem for that light to go out. When that light goes out, terrible things happen. Like your whole city gets confused. Right? So they got to keep that light on [fades out]