What’s up, swimmers?! This is the second and final conversation I’m bringing you this month, and while Secrets of Romani Fortune Telling: Divining with Tarot, Palmistry, Tea Leaves, and More and my chat with Jezmina Von Thiele and Paulina Stevens were perfect for Pisces season, we’re in Aries fire now, baby!!
I am so psyched for you to listen to this chat I had with Asa West, the author of the recently released Witch Blood Rising: Awaken Your Magic in a Modern World. Asa is a native Angeleno, and it was heartening to connect with her after January’s fires, and talk about the changing landscape, common misconceptions, and rich history of the City of Angels.
We really run the gamut though—Come for Hollywood’s favorite witches, stay for Loki as a queer, neurodivergent, shapeshifting hottie!
Asa West is the author of The Witch’s Kin and Five Principles of Green Witchcraft, and her work has appeared in The Offing, Joyland, Gods&Radicals, and other publications. She holds an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and has been covering feminism and media since 2007 under the name Julia Glassman. As a journalist for The Mary Sue and other outlets, she covers everything from Marvel movies to folk horror—and, of course, all things witchy.
In Witch Blood Rising: Awaken Your Magic in a Modern World, Asa tells the story of how she became a witch and learned to find magic in the world around her. It starts with the story of receiving her witch name, and bobs and weaves through folk tales, myths, notes on the craft, the histories and practices of deity worship and other spirit relationships, and more!
But don’t take it from just me!
, author of Initiated: Memoir of a Witch and , wrote, “This book is a call to action: tend to the embers of witchcraft burning within you. Enchantment is the fire that can and will transform the world.”Asa has the most calming presence and speaks so beautifully about so many topics. She embodies so many incredible qualities, and cares so deeply about life, land, and story. In a chaotic time of climate change and clashes between capitalism and care, Asa is a perfect and gentle guide back into your body, your spirit, your home, and your practices. She is available for virtual tarot readings.
Some of my favorite topics from the episode include:
On gatekeeping the title of witch: “Honestly, I have found myself guilty of that in the past. Like, I've had to step back from, you know, realizing like, Oh no, wait a minute. I'm not—I'm not protecting anything here. I'm just gatekeeping. You know? …[It] takes some conscious effort to realize we don't actually own this word. There's no membership card that people have to get in the mail. Like, anyone can claim this word for themselves.”
On the acceleration of climate change’s timeline: “[O]ne thing that I've been thinking about just over and over again with these fires is how when I was a kid, you know, climate change was measured in like decades, right? …And I feel like the timescale has just accelerated in this really terrifying way… So before we knew it, we were now measuring climate change in years… And in January, when the fires broke out, I thought now we're measuring climate change in months… And it's so tragic. We've had my entire life to stop this, to do something about this, and nothing was done, right? And now half of Los Angeles burned down.”
On the ancient Bee Priestesses and their Queen Bees: “[T]hese orders of priestesses were kind of compared to bees because of the virtues of bees,
right? …And I started learning about bees themselves... how the hive was organized. I started learning about the role of the queen, right? We call her the queen and it makes us think like, oh, she commands all the other bees, right? But in actuality, she's set aside just because her role is very, very specialized. She kind of trades in her ability to fly and her freedom of movement for her ability to reproduce and then she just spends the rest of her life just laying eggs, laying eggs, laying eggs.”
Until next time, just keep swimming!
xx, bee
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