Busy Philipps: Crystals & Kids
In this week’s episode, we talk baby-making magic: Actor Busy Philipps asks the tarot if she should have another kid, then witch Dori Midnight tells us all about her enchanted honey — including the one host Michelle Tea ate when she was trying to get pregnant.
Busy Philipps: I've always thought thought I was a witch since I was like a kid. I just felt like I had power. I mean, and I do!
[Music]
Michelle Tea: This is Your Magic, a Spotify Original from Parcast Studios and Your Magic Media.
I’m Michelle Tea. Today on our episode I’m going to talk with the amazing Busy Philipps — actor, memoirist, abortion rights advocate, and host of the fantastic podcast Busy Philipps Is Doing Her Best. We’ll talk about crystals and meditation and babies.
Next, we have a spell concocted by an adult witch and her seven-year-old friend. It’s a ritual to bring laughter, and yes, it involves a Whoopee Cushion.
And finally, we’re going to hear from Dori Midnight, an East Coast witch whose fertility nectar I used in my own baby quest. And she’ll tell us about her practice of creating charmed honey.
Stay with us.
[Music]
Michelle Tea: About nine years ago, when I was, at the tender age of 40, trying to get pregnant, it seemed like what I really needed to help things along was magic. I understand making babies is basic science, it’s like super 101, but as a single, ovary-having-person who didn’t really date sperm-having-people, it was a challenge. Then there was my age, right? I was still ovulating, but I feared my eggs were hobbling down my fallopian tubes on little walkers, with tennis balls jammed on the ends.
I was psyched to learn there was so much baby-making magic out there. Charms, candles, crystals, herbs for fertility. Mother Goddexxes to give offerings to. My altar was jammed with all this stuff. I meditated with a sweet gob of fertility honey in my mouth while talking in my mind to the spirit of my baby, which I was encouraged to do by blogs — you know, imagine that the spirit is just hovering around, waiting for a good entry. I found a piece of dead coral on a Mexican beach that was SO PHALLIC, I could only imagine there was some virile sea deity out there watching me and letting me know they were down with my quest. I put that on my altar too. Even the tips that came at me from the material world, like lay with your legs in the air after insemination, have an orgasm, drink maca — they seemed like witchcraft too.
At the end of it all, the only way I was ever going to get knocked up was through the magic of IVF. But the universe did bring to me a temporary partner who also wanted a baby, and who had eggs ten years younger than me, and a job with health insurance to put me on, and money to make a test tube baby. I can promise, if you knew my dating history, you’d understand how unusual it was for me to date somebody with these interests and resources. The Goddexx definitely brought this person into my life to help me make the baby I’d been craving. That baby is 6 now, born on the cusp of Scorpio and he loves picking all the grisliest swords cards from my tarot deck. Thank you, Goddexx.
Today’s guest, Busy Philipps, knows what it’s like to be the parent of a couple of witch babies.. We’re going to talk to her about motherhood, moldavite and meditation. Here’s Busy.
[Music]
Busy Philipps: Hi.
Michelle Tea: Hi. Thank you for coming.
Busy Philipps: I'm so happy to be here. Thanks for having me. I'm excited. You brought out all your crystals, so I'm going to bring the crystals that have been in my purse.
Michelle Tea: OK. Cool.
Busy Philipps: Sometimes. And I'm wearing, let's see, I'm wearing my ring that has rose quartz.
Michelle Tea: Beautiful.
Busy Philipps: Moonstone, moonstone. And then this is a moldavite.
Michelle Tea: Oh my God. I'm freaking out right now. I've never even touched a moldavite in real life.
Busy Philipps: What? Wait. I want you to put this in your hand and then just like explain what you feel.
Michelle Tea: OK. Moldavite is a powerful green crystal. This one is a very dark green one. They always look sort of rough and bumpy. They're very rare.
Busy Philipps: They're not pretty.
Michelle Tea: It does seem like an alien rock.
Busy Philipps: It's really wild.
Michelle Tea: And you carry it in a little plastic envelope.
Busy Philipps: In a little pouch.
Michelle Tea: You have to it's.
Busy Philipps: It's so tiny.
Michelle Tea: Small and precious.
Busy Philipps: It's small and precious. But like, if I want to hold it, sometimes I put it oh my God. Sometimes I put crystals in my bra.
Michelle Tea: I love that. I love that.
Busy Philipps: OK. So that's my moldavite.
Michelle Tea: Why do you carry these beauties around with you? What do they do for you?
Busy Philipps: I don't know. I like reassurance, you know, and I'm a little bit of a person who feels like and I've said this to Birdie, my older daughter like, “Well, it can't hurt.” It can't hurt to have some extra protection.
Michelle Tea: Totally. Yeah. Well, you're so clearly into all this stuff. What is your sign?
Busy Philipps: I'm a Cancer.
Michelle tea: Do you feel like you are a Cancer?
Busy Philipps: Yeah, pretty much. Pretty much for the most part. Yeah.
Michelle Tea: What is it like to be Cancer?
Busy Philipps: I'm very sensitive. I'm super emotional. My home is very important. I'm married to a Cancer.
Michelle Tea: What's the vibe?
Busy Philipps: Well, we both really have a deep focus on our home and making our home kind of perfect. Like our shell. Perfect. We are constantly doing work like thinking of ways that we want it to improve or make it cozier. You know, it's really interesting. I think I have a Leo rising, too.
Michelle Tea: I mean, you feel kind of Leo-y.
Busy Philipps: Yeah, I have like a fire in me.
Michelle Tea: Yeah. For sure. And like you're so comfortable to like talking and being casual and open. I feel like that's a very Leo. It’s not very much a Cancer.
Busy Philipps: No, no, no. I'm much more extroverted than any other Cancers that I know.
Michelle Tea: Yeah.
Busy Philipps: Including my daughter and my husband.
Michelle Tea: I mean, for an actor, it's great to be a Leo. It's surprising how many Leos I think are actors. Or how many actors are Leos.
Busy Philipps: Yeah. There's a lot of Cancers, though, too.
Michelle Tea: Really?
Busy Philipps: Yeah. Sensitive. Like you're able to channel emotion and stuff.
Michelle Tea: For sure, that's cool. Do you have a spiritual practice or like a self-care practice? Like what does that look like for you?
Busy Philipps: Well, I just started meditating.
Michelle Tea: Oh. What kind of meditation are you doing? There's so many styles.
Busy Philipps: There are styles. Yeah. The guy that I worked with practices a kind of meditation that's sort of an offshoot of T.M. So it's not T.M. It's not a part of the T.M. Organization.
Michelle Tea: So T.M. is Transcendental Meditation. And that's its own kind of brand. Right.
Busy Philipps: It's a brand, I would say.
Michelle Tea: You have to get a teacher. Yeah. So what do you do?
Busy Philipps: So you get a mantra that's private.
Michelle Tea: You don't have to share it on the podcast.
Busy Philipps: You don't share. You don't say it out loud. You're supposed to do it 20 minutes, twice a day. But I'm not hard on myself. I know some people who've, like, tried to get into meditation and then they end up like feeling guilty when they don't do it correctly or whatever.
Michelle Tea: They want to win at meditation.
Busy Philipps: Right. But my teacher Teo was really lovely and was like, we all do the best we can. And so this is our goal. And then, yeah, you get there, you don't get there. We hope you do. But if you don't, you know that tomorrow's a new day.
Michelle Tea: How long you been doing it for?
Busy Philipps: I mean no, really just started like four days ago.
Michelle Tea: Oh, OK. So you probably haven't had any massive effects of it yet or have you?
Busy Philipps: Kind of I have, actually. But I've. But it's a little bit unfair for me to say I just started four days ago because number one, I'm an actor and I have been my whole life. And like all of the work that actors do, whether or not you, like, go to a school or do whatever, you're in classes and it's all about breathing and putting yourself into other realities, and like getting into a different headspace. Like it's all these like different things where you're sort of, you know, going inward. Right. So I feel like my entire life I've sort of been able to have that kind of connection. And then I've done yoga since I was a teenager. And so yoga that practice and shavasana. You know like that's all meditation, right?
Michelle Tea: For sure. Has your has your attitude toward spirituality changed over time?
Busy Philipps: I don't know. I mean, I think I was always very into like astrology and ties to the universe, and it was never — even though my parents were Catholic and I was sort of taken to church and tried to, you know, be put into that place like that never really.
Michelle Tea: Same.
Busy Philipps: That never was a thing that resonated for me. But this other like the idea of things happening when they need to, of things presenting themselves when you need to see them, like all of those things I've really subscribed to since I was like pretty young.
Michelle Tea: Yeah.
Busy Philipps: You know. And that was just, I don't know, that wasn't anything that my parents kind of instilled in me. It was more just who I was.
Michelle Tea: You had that kind of connection.
Busy Philipps: I just, yeah. I just felt that. That just felt right to me.
Michelle Tea: Do think that, I don't know, being raised Catholic makes you more prone to a sort of mysticism. I feel like Catholics are like the witches of the Christian, like of Christianity. Do you know what I mean?
Busy Philipps: I've always thought, maybe, maybe. I've always thought I was a witch since I was like a kid.
Michelle Tea: How did that feel when you were a kid? What did that mean to you?
Busy Philipps: I just felt like I had power. I mean, and I do. You know what I mean?
Michelle Tea: Yeah.
Busy Philipps: And I and I felt like my mom had power, too. And I felt like hers was maybe even like a little bit less harnessed than mine. She was open to it. So I remember having weird conversations with her like in 4th grade, where I would tell her that I was pretty sure that we were witches.
Michelle Tea: Really? Was she, was she receptive to it?
Busy Philipps: Yeah, yeah. She's into it. She liked it.
Michelle Tea: That's cool, that's really cool.
Busy Philipps: But I would always have, like weird dreams or visions or deja vu or like things that I just knew were going to be true and they were ended up being true.
Michelle Tea: Yeah.
Busy Philipps: And not just like always would reaffirm my witchy-ness.
Michelle Tea: Yeah.
Busy Philipps: And continues to. And then my one my one daughter is like very witchy.
Michelle Tea: Really? You can see it in her. Can she recognize it in herself?
Busy Philipps: Yeah. Oh yeah. For sure. It's cool.
Michelle Tea: That's very neat.
Busy Philipps: And then my other daughter truly exists on a celestial level. Like I don't think she is bound by the constraints of the real world. If that makes any sense.
Michelle Tea: She's operating to, according to a different set of rules?
Busy Philipps: No. Just like she doesn't. I think that the that everything is open to her like consciousness-wise. Like I think she came into this world with just like a higher consciousness and she just definitely communes with nature in a way. Like she really, really and most like tiny kids do. But at a certain point they like lose their magic. You know, and they move into the real world. And she just has never stopped.
Michelle Tea: Oh, do you like that too? Do you like to commune with nature? Is that part of your sort of spiritual I don’t know, proclivities
Busy Philipps: I love like little spiritual creatures you know.
Michelle Tea: Uh huh. Ones that you can really imagine being an emissary from the beyond.
Busy Philipps: Yeah. Yeah. It's interesting that I named Birdie Birdie and I have a tattoo of a hummingbird for her. And then Cricket is Cricket. And crickets are magical, you know? And she is magic, like she is like a magic person. I know I could cry. I used to say to Mark, who is my husband and the father of my children. I used to say that I was so concerned because it almost feels like Cricket's too magical to belong to anyone. Like she doesn't even belong to me like she’s. Does this make sense?
Michelle Tea: It does. Yeah.
Busy Philipps: Like, I was worried about it, like that she would be taken from me somehow.
Michelle Tea: Oh no.
Busy Philipps: Yeah.
Michelle Tea: ‘Cause like she's like a fairy changeling creature.
Busy Philipps: Correct.
Michelle Tea: And that her fairy family will come for her.
Busy Philipps: Yeah. That she's just, she's she's so like pure magic that, that I don't like that she doesn't belong to us, she belongs to the universe and they're going to come get her.
Michelle Tea: That's so special. The universe will come get all of us. But I mean how, how lovely to be carrying that magic out into the world. Like, who knows what she'll do with it?
[Music]
Michelle Tea: Well, I have a deck of tarot cards here. Have you ever had your tarot cards read before?
Busy Philipps: Oh for sure.
Michelle Tea: I am not surprised. Do you have anything that you'd like to pick cards on today?
Busy Philipps: Here should we ask it if I'm going to have another baby.
Michelle Tea: OK what does it look like.
Busy Philipps: What would it look like if I had another baby. Yes or no.
Michelle Tea: OK. Queen of Disks. Knight of Swords and the Hanged Man.
Busy Philipps: Whoa.
Michelle Tea: Interesting.
Busy Philipps: What does it mean?
Michelle Tea: I mean, the Hanged Man makes, it really makes sense that you would get the Hanged Man for a question like that, because it's like, let's just start at the beginning with the Queen of Disks. I mean, this lady has it made. She's sitting on a giant pineapple. She's holding this beautiful globe. She's gazing out at her fertile land that she owns. I mean, she's just like, I own the world. I'm great. And so what I think this is saying she's got a little goat familiar right there.
Busy Philipps: Is that I'm doing good right now.
Michelle Tea: You're doing rad.
Busy Philipps: Yeah. I'm the queen of disks.
Michelle Tea: You are the queen of disks.
Busy Philipps: That’s what people call me.
Michelle Tea: I think it's saying a couple, and I think there's two meanings to this. I think that one meaning is you've got the resources.
Busy Philipps: Yes, sure.
Michelle Tea: You've got the resources to do this. You know, you've got the fertile landscape. You want to get pregnant, you'll get pregnant.
Busy Philipps: By the way, we know this about me.
Michelle Tea: Yeah. OK. Yeah. I mean, I think saying all roads are open. But I think it also might be saying, like, you got it really good right now.
Busy Philipps: Yeah. Things are good. Yes.
Michelle Tea: You know what I mean? Yeah. Things are really good. The Knight of Swords, this is really interesting. This is an air card, an air sign. And it's showing this knight. And his, his horse is just bursting off into going really, really fast. He's got little really beautiful like dragonfly wings on his helmet that are spinning. And he's got these little friend birds.
Busy Philipps: I know.
Michelle Tea: That are next to him. It's like I feel like you would get pregnant very quickly. It would all happen very quickly. I mean, this is sort of a card where you set your mind to it and it's going to happen.
Busy Philipps: Right.
Michelle Tea: It's supported. It has. You have support in this. The Hanged Man is intense. But it is an intense situation that you deliberately put yourself in. It's not like the Tower where something sort of happens unexpectedly. You really know, I'm going to do this thing, it's going to fuck my life up for a certain period of time.
Busy Philipps: That's what children are.
Michelle Tea: That's what children are. Yeah. I'm going to deliberately fuck my life for a while. But you know-
Busy Philipps: But it's a choice.
Michelle Tea: It's a choice. And you're not. And you're making it because there is a greater good to come out of it. It's like. So the illustration of the Hanged Man.
Busy Philipps: It's really beautiful.
Michelle Tea: Yeah. in this one, it's this guy who's hung by one foot from an ankh and his other leg is crossed and his arms are stretched out. It looks really uncomfortable, but he deliberately put himself in that pose because it's going to help him reach Nirvana.
So it's sort of like you suffer through nine months of pregnancy and all of the postpartum hormonal elevator drop and, you know, and, you know, having reduced movement in your life because of the joy and the beauty that come with being a parent, bringing like a person into the world and seeing that magic unfold. So I think what this is telling you is that, you know, be prepared to put everything on hold for a bit. If you do it, if you-
Busy Philipps: If I wanted to.
Michelle Tea: If you want. Yeah. Yeah.
Busy Philipps: That's what it would look like.
Michelle Tea: Yeah.
Busy Philipps: Thanks for all your insight.
Michelle Tea: Yeah.
Busy Philipps: I feel like it was really like reaffirming things that I sort of was already feeling, but it was nice to see them from someone else who has no idea.
Michelle Tea: Yeah.
[Music]
Bruxa: Hi I’m Bruxa. I’m a queer witch from Brazil. Latina. And I am a artist, performer.
So this is called The Laughing Jar and it’s a spell to invoke laughter and joy. It’s dedicated to the goddess Thalia. I actually created this with a seven-year-old boy who’s very gobblish.
So we will need a jar, a picture of something that makes you laugh, some biodegradable glitter, cotton balls. I put in a clown nose. And then I thought a Whoopee Cushion for you to place the jar on top of. You put everything in the jar except for the Whoopee Cushion, because that’s going to be underneath right. And then once you put your clown nose, your cotton balls, your glitter, a picture of something that makes you laugh, and anything else that brings you joy, you also want to laugh inside of the jar, and then fart. Fart in the jar.
There’s also a little saying. And it goes like this:
Goddess Thalia. This is a gift of silence, this is a present of air, kisses, and hugs. May the tears that fall from our eyes be the product of abundant laughter. Puff puff puff. Toot toot toot.
[Music]
Michelle Tea: O.M.G., thank you Bruxa and young friend. Because I live with a six-year-old, I am constantly reminded how hilarious farts are, but if you had forgotten, we have brought you this spell. You’re welcome.
Back when I was working very hard to conceive my Whoopee Cushion-loving six-year-old, I ingested all sorts of tinctures and supplements, on top of IVF medications — and by far my favorite baby-vibes ritual was consuming honey that had been charmed for fertility by the witch Dori Midnight.
Dori Midnight: Anything can be a vessel and a vehicle for a spell and for magic and healing.
Michelle Tea: Dori’s going to tell us all about her magic nectar, but head’s up: Dori is a queer witch with a radically queer practice, and like a lot of marginalized folks, she’s reclaimed some of the language that has historically been used against queers and she employs it with consciousness and love. Here is Dori Midnight, to tell us why the magic of bees is so potent.
[Music]
Dori Midnight: You know I was seeing people out of my house. And this really sweet older fag contacted me and was like, can you make me a custom love spell formula?
I feel like it was on the summer solstice or something and like just kind of sweeten himself for this love spell. Like he was like, I want to fall in love with myself. I want to feel like I am like so lovable. I want to like, undo all of the stories of, like unworthiness and not deserving love and unlovability and shame. And we talked a lot about honey as sort of like being the perfect vehicle for that because it has this, like, stickiness and. And like invitation to others, and it also has this like kind of like communal medicine in it.
You know it’s made love-making right? It's like made in this kind of like orgy of elements of like sunshine and flowers.
So I started making big batches in my kitchen in my in a pot like where I would just, like, infuse the honeys and I was using, like, orange blossoms and roses and then putting the essences and jarring them up and I made like batches of abundance honey and batches of love spell honey, batches of sex honey. And then I would get to hear, like, these incredible stories from people about how they use them.
There is like one time I walked into a shop in San Francisco and people were like, Oh, Dori, you we, like our friends bought us a hot sex honey from you. And then it was like what started out with like people like licking honey off each other's arms like at a party. And then it just turned into like this like, you know, queer sex extravaganza with, like, the honey all over everybody.
I'm Jewish and so much of my practice is really grounded and rooted in Jewish healing and magic. And honey is just really core to Jewish tradition, like it’s in the Torah, it’s in like sacred texts from like you know second and third century.
Just a drop of honey has revived people when they were close to death. So it just has that aspect of kind of like restoring someone to life.
So like even when you're facing kind of like the hardest aspects of yourself or you're wrestling with really hard relationships or you're in deep grief or heartbreak, that just like having a spoonful of honey sweetens the bitterness of life.
[Music]
Michelle Tea: I just think sometimes, when we’re facing down the big scary world, it’s just a drop of sweetness that we need to help us reconnect to self-compassion, or to our bodies or our lives. One of the reasons i loved taking Dori’s honey while I was also shooting my butt up with fertility hormones is that it reconnected me to the sweet and simple root of my situation. I was just a person in a body, trying to have a baby. We hope you have honey in your cabinet for when you need just a little sweetness reality check, and/or a Whoopee Cushion lying around if you need to be reminded that laughter is still the best, most magical medicine, and a crystal to tuck into your pocket, for bravery or love or intuition, whatever your great big life is asking of you today.
Thank you for tuning in to Your Magic. Make sure you follow us on Twitter and Instagram @thisisyourmagic, subscribe to us here on Spotify, so that you never miss an episode. And sign up for our newsletter at thisisyourmagic.com and you’ll get more musings from our team of spiritual seekers. You can email us also at hello@thisisyourmagic.com, we would love to hear from you.
This episode was produced and edited by Molly Elizalde and Tony Gannon. Production support came from Veronica Agard, Kristine Mar, Raven Yamamoto, and Vera Blossom. Our executive producers are Ben Cooley, myself, and Molly Elizalde. Our original theme music is by John Kimbrough. Special thanks to Max Miller.
Join us next week for a conversation with Alexander Chee. Thanks again for listening!