Phoebe Bridgers: DIY Witchcraft & New Moons

When did you first realize you were a witch? This week, singer-songwriter Phoebe Bridgers takes us inside her practice of witchcraft, from childhood potions to the magical powers of songwriting. Then, producer and newbie witch Vera Blossom explores her Filipino ancestry through new moon ceremonies.

Phoebe Bridgers: Magic isn't just asking for things. I think it has been important for me to realize, like it's sometimes it's just there for, for no reason. For you to feel nice. 

[Music]

Michelle Tea: This is Your Magic, a Spotify Original from Parcast Studios and Your Magic Media. I’m Michelle Tea.

In part one of our program we’re going to hang out with Phoebe Bridgers, talking about witchcraft as self-care, life on the road, and what to do when creativity becomes an obligation. 

Next, it’s over to New York-based spiritual healer and Your Magic producer Veronica Agard, who will share a powerful incantation designed to acquaint you with your ancestors. 

And finally, our producer Vera Blossom will close out the show by taking us along on her newbie witch exploration of New Moon rituals. And then you’re off to do your own ancestor invoking and moon worshipping.

[Music]

Michelle Tea: I started practicing witchcraft in high school. I was goth, it was the 1980s, I was in New England. I mean what was I supposed to do, you guys? With my black lace dresses from the Goodwill and my spidery Robert Smith hair, and I was toting around a spell book and a pack of tarot cards. I attracted a lot of attention. And mostly it was not good. 

But surprisingly, there were many people — like really normal people — cheerleaders at my high school, moms that I worked with at my, you know, after-school convenience store job, women in my family (especially them — these gossipy, chain-smoking Catholic women). They were all very interested in the occult arts. 

What I learned from interacting with all of them, is that most everyone has a little bit of witch in them. Obviously, some people have a whole bunch of witch in them and other folks, tragically, don’t have very much. But most of the people that I encountered were deeply curious about magic. As I got older I began to understand that I was a witch and if I was, so were many of these people around me, even if they didn’t see themselves that way. To me, today, a witch is a person who is a little bit touched by magic — by the magic of life. They’re open to the mystery of it all, sometimes in spite of themselves. They can’t shake the sense that there is something bigger and stranger at work in this realm. 

Our next guest has a lot of witch in her. What is the official measurement of “witch”? Cauldron-full? Speed-of-broom? When science does discover a way to calculate personal magnetism, strength of manifestation, and elegance of intuition, they need to come running looking for Phoebe Bridgers. Here she is. 

[Music]

Michelle Tea: This is our first Mercury retrograde interview, so I'm sure everything will just go totally fine. 

Phoebe Bridgers: You know, this is actually insane because this has never happened to me before. I had a dream that I started my period in white pants and then I woke up and there was period blood all over me. 

Michelle Tea: Oh, my God. 

Phoebe Bridgers: So that's my retrograde, my first retrograde experience. 

Michelle Tea: What's your relationship like to your dreams? Like, do you remember them often or do you have like a dream landscape that you return to?

Phoebe Bridgers: I feel like I love remembering my dreams. I love writing down my dreams. I've written melodies in my dreams before. There's a song from my last record that is like a dream melody.

Michelle Tea: No way, which one?

Phoebe Bridgers: It's called “Savior Complex.” Which is cool because it's the weirdest melody on my album. I feel like I return, in my waking life I keep writing the same song like eight times over, and then I have like, once it's done, be like, "I have to change this so that it's not exactly like all the other songs." And then this melody was so weird.

I used to have a dream, a recurring dream, that I could levitate things. And then when I woke up, I would like stare at different stuff in my room trying to make it happen. And they never did, obviously.

Michelle Tea: When did you realize that you were a witch? 

Phoebe Bridgers: I feel like I went through kind of a heartbreak process with it, actually, because I always felt like a witch when I was a kid. And then when I didn't, like I would play with weird — actually is really gross — my friends and I would like we would pour out all our milk at school into like a big bowl and then get like weird plants. And then we'd all have to drink it like some weird cult.

Michelle Tea: Ooh.

Phoebe Bridgers: But then when I turned 11 and I didn't get my Hogwarts acceptance letter, I was like, "I need to leave this life behind," you know?

Michelle Tea: Oh my god.

Phoebe Bridgers: And then ... And then it was only really after high school that, like, one of my best friends kind of like came into her witchy-ness and started reading tarot and started doing like astrological readings. I was like, "oh, that's that's interesting that that's like an adulthood thing." And then now, it's like the way that I communicate with so many of my friends. I mean, during normal times, now we've been doing it over Zoom but I'll get the coven together and light a bunch of candles and have like snacks like a suburban mother and then we sit around and talk about our feelings. It's great.

Michelle Tea: Oh I love it so much. It’s like you’ve got a little like de facto DIY coven of sorts with your friends. How have your witch practices changed? Do you still feel the magic? 

Phoebe Bridgers: Totally. Sometimes more so. We were like, how are we going to go back? Because so much about my life I love to chronicle and I love to journal and I love to kind of invest so much of my energy in magic and when quarantine started, I have this beautiful, like, dream journal slash calendar and when the dates started to slowly, like, disappear into nothing, I feel like I just let that whole side of me go. And then and then somewhere around, you know, the middle of the summer, I started being like, "Oh, it actually I actually do feel better when I journal or when I set…” I think it's hard for me. Setting intentions? Easy. Great. Totally love it. Charm magic? Great. But I feel like the hardest thing for me is getting to what I actually want, like what I really actually want, because I, I have definitely gotten things that I wanted and then had them totally fall apart because I didn't have the root of it or wasn't going to enough therapy or whatever. Like I feel like that's my main issue and I think I just got kind of like freaked out or something. 

Michelle Tea: Sure like, you didn't have the foundation to support the magic actually happening. 

Phoebe Bridgers: Right. And also, magic isn't just asking for things. I think it has been important for me to realize, like it's sometimes it's just there for, for no reason. For you to feel nice. You know, and sometimes for me, I will burn like a ridiculous-looking like fall candle at my altar. And I'm like, "that's not lying to myself. It's just nice, you know?" It's like a Michael's craft store-style of witchcraft. 

Yeah. I feel like it's just making it up. I feel like that's my favorite part of witchcraft. I went on a walk with my drummer and we were like, "Can we catch leaves that fall into our hands?" You know? That's my favorite. Or I mean, maybe I don't recommend this for people who like cleanliness but like drinking from some random spring. And I like that it changes with the environment or even just like lighting a candle on a backstage, which smells like feet so it's nice for everybody.

Michelle Tea: Have you probably seen on the Internet there are all these like young witches that are identifying as different like types of witches, like "cottage witch" and "hedge witch" and "chaos witch" and "sea witch." Which, it feels ... I don't know. I have a five-year-old who's really into Pokemon, so it all feels like Pokemon characters in a funny way that I really like. And I just was wondering what kind of witch you would be.

Phoebe Bridgers: I would probably pick hedge witch because it's the most solitary, right?

Michelle Tea: Is that being a hedge witch? I think so, right? And it's like it's very grounded and earthy.

Phoebe Bridgers: I think so. Yeah. Because I'm not quite a cottage witch, I'm too messy. Definitely not a chaos witch, because I'm not messy enough. Yeah.

Michelle Tea: Hedge witch is just right.

Phoebe Bridgers: Yeah I feel like hedge witch is probably what I’d go for.

Michelle Tea: I really identify with the way that you are a fan. Because I have often felt like being an overzealous fan — I have been that throughout my life — has had spiritual dimensions, like almost worshiping something larger than myself. I just was wondering if your fandom has ever had what felt like mystical dimensions to you.

Phoebe Bridgers: Absolutely. I mean, the record to the specific example that I use is Elliott Smith, who, you know, missed me in my same neighborhood by like 10 years. He passed away when I was a kid, so. But if he had been alive, we would have had pretty much every mutual friend on the planet, would've lived in the exact same neighborhood. Like, we've worked with a lot of the same people. And so it just feels like this weird like ... And I grew up just obsessed with him. So it's this ... I'm glad part of me, the song “Punisher” is about how glad I am I didn't meet him too early. Maybe glad I didn't meet him because it would be you know, I know what his high school girlfriend's name was and that they had a band. Like, I would've been a terrifying person to be around. But also my my my mystical fandom has been really positive. Like, I've just gotten to work with a lot of people that, like the exact right people for me. I always joke about that, like if it was just any successful musician, that's one thing and that's cool. But for me, it's been the exact musicians that I am the most obsessed with. So it'll be like, you know, Conor Oberst, Bon Iver. You know, I got to meet Joni Mitchell. It's like my world is very curated for me specifically. So, yeah, it does feel very mystical.

Michelle Tea: What does a song feel like when it comes to you?

Phoebe Bridgers: My favorite thing is when you're like really trying for some specific thing that's kind of elusive, like some sort of idea or like you're like, "I need to shove this whole thing in this one little line." And then you accidentally, around it, write the best song ever. You know, like out of the idea that you're kind of obsessed with cramming in there, you've written lines that are better than that idea to make it happen. And then. 

Michelle Tea: Yeah. 

Phoebe Bridgers: The initial idea is just gone. Like it doesn't even make it into the song. That's my favorite. So it does feel like magical powers. 

Michelle Tea: It's like you got to trick yourself to get out of your own, I don't know, expectations or something.

Phoebe Bridgers: Every time I write a song, when it's over, I'm like, "Well, that was the last one."

[Music]

Michelle Tea: Can I read cards for you? Can I pull some cards for you? 

Phoebe Bridgers: Yes. Yes please. 

Michelle Tea: Do you have anything you want some like insight on? 

Phoebe Bridgers: Yeah. Like, I'm curious about, there's like a late-stage capitalist pressure to constantly be making stuff, but then also with, but with music, it's also like my spirituality. Like music is very much like the witchiest thing that I do. 

Michelle Tea: Yes. 

Phoebe Bridgers: So I think I just want to know: What do I need to know about my, like obligations and my creativity? Like, how, how can I ... What do I need to do to like, look forward and feel connected again? If that makes sense. 

Michelle Tea: It does make sense. Yeah. Absolutely. And this. I think, you know, once once we get lucky enough to have the art that we do start being our life, it ends up being this weird mixed bag because then yeah, the late-stage capitalism influences our inspiration, which is, it's always a toxin in the system, right? 

I have an idea to pick, like pick three cards that sort of illuminate like what's your path right now with your obligations in that way, like with your sort of commercial like momentum. And then, and then pick three cards of like what, what does it look like moving into like your spiritual connection with your music and your own personal muse and we can see if there's any discrepancies between them. Does that sound good? 

Phoebe Bridgers: Yes. Great idea. 

Michelle Tea: So first I'm gonna pick saying, like, what does it look like? What is this, the kind of capitalist commercial market sphere of music look like for you right now? 

So I pick three cards and now on sort of market forces, external forces and now I'm going to pick, I'm shuffling to pick three cards on your own relationship with your own internal muse and inspiration and your spiritual connection with the magic that is music and songwriting for you. 

OK, so your three cards for your relationship right now with sort of, you know, external forces with your art. Ooh, the Empress, I like to see that. The Fool, really like to see that. 

Phoebe Bridgers: Yes. That's so fun. 

Michelle Tea: And the Ace of Wands. Damn. OK. So this is good. So like, to have the Empress, it's like you actually are being nurtured, you know, like you are in a situation where, you know, the business side of your art is actually very nurturing to you and loving and supportive and it's not harsh. And, you know, you're not Britney Spears. You are Phoebe Bridgers. And it's good. You know my heart goes out to Britney, of course. 

The Fool card. This is really cool. And this could definitely also be about your label because The Fool is the beginning of like a new thing, right? It's like a new, it's like springtime, taking a risk, jumping in, not really knowing where you're going to land, but trusting that it's for the best and being propelled sort of by your own wildness and inspiration. So to know that, like, you know, the, your, the market forces that are surrounding and supporting you are push are like this vibe. That's the best like that's what you want. 

And then again, Ace of Wands another, there's like a new beginning for you happening right now, a new cycle of inspiration, a new cycle possibly of material. This is such a creative card. And, you know, with the ace, you might not be totally feeling it yet. Usually the two or three is when you're like, "Oh, yeah, I'm doing this thing, this new thing" with the ace, it's sort of like bubbling up inside you, you know? So that looks super cool. 

OK, now let's see that the cards about your own inspiration with yourself. You have the Prince of Cups. He's a very Scorpio dude on his flying bird in this deck. And we have Gain, which is really lovely. And is this. Oh, it's a Virgo. It's Venus in Virgo. It's the Nine of Disks. 

Phoebe Bridgers: Oh wow.

Michelle Tea: It's a nice, earthy card. Yeah. And we have the best one. The Six of Disks, the best one in the suit, Success. Moon in Taurus. This is really cool. It looks like, OK, there is something sticky happening with the Prince of Cups. I just want to talk about him and who he is in this particular deck. The image is of this guy and he's riding on a bird that is skimming the surface of the water and his wings are these like clouds of steam. And it's this very ... you know, just to talk about what Scorpio energy is like. Scorpio's they have such a bad rep. I love Scorpios. I really do. I love them for their intensity, in their passion. They feel things really strongly, alright? So this is talking about possibly your ability to feel things really strongly in your own self and how sometimes when we know when the emotional stakes feel high, we get a little controlling. And that's what this guy's problem is. This bird could, like, dive deep and take him into the cool depths of the ocean, or he could soar and he could, like, you know, go above the cloud line and just like be up in the sky. But he's, like, trying to control everything. And so he's, like, not making a move. He's a little paralyzed. It's just like reflecting on just some things we've talked about in this conversation, the feeling of like, "Oh, I did it again. Is that the last one?" Like that kind of sensation. I really relate to that, but I almost feel like it's asking you to drop that and to have some and just to have a bigger trust, try to grow a larger sense of trust. 

You know, there is something about how, something interesting looking at these cards that for your material reading about like the business side, you've got these very inspired cards. And then for your inspiration reading, you've got these very business-y cards. It's very interesting. I think that there's something about your Capricorn Moon and like how you're like saying you're a nerd for marketing. I feel like allowing this like you getting deeper into the business side of things is actually going to be very inspiring for your art. And it might alter your art a little bit, but only in ways that are going to feel really exciting and really grounded. I mean, Gain and Success. Yes, you're going to be writing a lot more songs, you're going to be very inspired. They're going to be bangers. You're going to be happy with what you've produced. But I think this little Prince of Cups is just a little bit casting a little shadow. So he just needs to be cleared out. But these are great, I'm so excited for you. That first reading to get two major arcanas. I always feel like, it's like in the in the slot machine of tarot. Those are like sevens or cherries or something. You’re like, yes. 

Phoebe Bridgers: I love that. I love that card. I'm ... It came. It brought to mind this um...  Do read Carmen Maria Machado? 

Michelle Tea: Oh, I love her. 

Phoebe Bridgers: I love her so much. She has the thing where she's like, you need to be having an affair with your art. You need to find what keeps you up at night and like not out of obligation, but it should feel like it's constantly worrying in your brain. And that's my favorite feeling. And I think that's what I'm trying to get back. 

[Music]

Michelle Tea: If you want to learn how to make magic like Phoebe Bridgers style, and I know you do, we are going to run her special scripting spell in next week’s Your Magic newsletter. Subscribe to it at thisisyourmagic.com and learn how to manifest like a boss.

[Music]

Veronica Agard: Peace. My name is Veronica Agard, and I'm here to share a spell that can help you begin a relationship with your ancestors.

I think it can help you not feel alone during these times, especially during mass isolation, if you realize that there are so many people that live within you. I also think that it can help with anxiety to try and do talk therapy in a way with your ancestors, so say “Here’s what I’m going through,” “This is what I’m thinking about,” or “This is what I need help with.”

You just need yourself and you need to be in a space that feels sacred to you, whatever that looks like. 

Once you're in the spot, you can consider what it is that you would like to invite down or what you're in need of. And also think about if you want to call on ancestors that are known to you or ancestors that are unknown to you. If you want to give thanks to the ancestors of the land that you're on, you can go in many different ways with that. So with that being said, I made this invocation that can help you start once you get to that level of understanding. 

Honorable ancestors, known and unknown, I ask for your blessings at this time. As I begin my relationship with you, I pray for peace for those of you who may have suffered in your lifetime. May your existence be sweeter and kinder now. I give thanks to the constellation of ancestors who live within me. May I have the courage to continue to rise to the challenges of my time and make you proud. Show yourselves to me and communicate with me in a way that I need to hear and have patience with me if you must repeat the message. Please support me in maintaining my good character and may any challenges or obstacles that I face be met with ease. And so it is. Ashe. 

[Music]

Michelle Tea: Thank you Veronica, that was beautiful. If you’re ever overwhelmed as to where to begin in a magic practice, like we all have ancestors. And so many cultures throughout time have believed that they stick around, and they want to help us. 

If you’re curious about other ways to bring some manifestation magic into your life, I invite you to look up. Out your window. Into the nighttime sky. Behold the moon.

Humans have been honoring moon deities since the beginning of recorded time, and it’s from these ancient traditions that modern witches have developed rituals around the new moon to help express dreams and desires. Today we’ll journey to 21st century Las Vegas, where Your Magic producer and newbie witch Vera Blossom shares with us the very personal process of developing her new moon ritual.

[Music]

Michelle Tea: Hi, Vera.

Vera Blossom: Hi, Michelle.

Michelle Tea: I have been wondering what your witch history is, how did you find your way to witchiness?

Vera Blossom: I think I found my way to witchiness through the same way a lot of other people find their way through witchiness, which was watching The Craft. 

Michelle Tea: When you think about it now, what do you remember about that movie that still sort of like carries that spark of inspiration or truth for you?

Vera Blossom: I think I identify with them being misfits and kind of finding a community in each other and finding an importance in magic and exercising control over their world through their friendship and also them just being super stylish.

Michelle Tea: Yes

Vera Blossom: I want to be that

Michelle Tea: So what kind what kind of rituals are you into doing? Like what, what kind of activity, as a witch, do you partake in.

Vera Blossom: Well so yeah, I have a confession.

Michelle Tea: OK.

Vera Blossom: I've never done any ritual thing as a witch. It's kind of like a shame I have because I called myself a witch and I work for Your Magic, but I've never done a ritual of any kind.

Michelle Tea: There's so much pressure. I feel like witchy people like we all put on ourselves to just be like super productive witches. Like I it's the, it's the full moon. I got to get my crystals out there. I got to make my full moon water, you know, and if you don't, you just feel like you failed a little bit.

But it's like I really think people are witches in that way where you're just gifted with that sort of magic or that sensibility or that sort of receptiveness. And you can elaborate upon it by doing rituals or you can just like sit on it happily and just enjoy the glamor that it adds to your life, you know?

Vera Blossom: Right. Yeah. I started looking into new moon rituals because that's something I've heard a lot about. And I was going through all these blogs and like these Instagram accounts kind of talking about new moon rituals.

Michelle Tea: Uh huh.

Vera Blossom:But I don't know, it just sort of felt like disconnected in some way, reading these like strangers. Tell me about how to do a new moon ritual and a little confusing.

Michelle Tea: Yeah. You don’t know where people are, at what level do you start with the information. Do you do a 101 of like why we do new moon rituals? Do we talk about how every phase of the moon has its own sort of energetic correspondence? 

You know, like new moons are sort of the ending and beginnings kind of simultaneously of a lunar cycle. Right. So the moon has become full and then it's shrunk away again. And now it's essentially invisible to us.

We can't see any of the sun's light reflected on the moon. So it appears dark in the sky. And for millennia, people have believed this is a great time to think about new beginnings. Whether you want to begin something, whether you want to let go of something. And so it's a really cool time for manifestation. But I know what you mean. Like in the witch-y blogosphere, it can just be like it's the new moon. Light a candle and you're like, wait, why?

Vera Blossom: Exactly. Like, I think I was looking exactly for the sort of like instruction that you just gave, because I feel like no one was giving me any context or any personal instruction at all.

Michelle Tea: Right.

Vera Blossom: So I really just wanted to find someone to kind of talk to me about their new moon ritual practice and maybe figure one out? I wanted someone to give a sort of witchy new moon ritual 101, and so i found Ashely Ray.

Ashley Ray: I'm a writer, a comedian, a pop culture expert. But I'm also someone who just deeply, deeply loves astrology and sort of my own practice of hoodoo that is just sort of a variation of my own tradition, stuff from my family, stuff that I just have picked up from people I love.

Michelle Tea: So, did Ashley tell you what she actually like physically does every new moon?

Vera Blossom: Yeah, so I asked Ashley exactly what kind of magic she did under the new moon, hoping to kind of learn from her process.

Ashley Ray: I work in the rule of threes. I like to do an offering or manifestation for myself, something for my ancestors.

I do ancestral veneration, so that can be either ancestral or generational healing that needs to happen under this moon. In my case, my grandma was a Libra. It was her birthday recently. So I think there is just a lot of her energy that I feel right now. 

And then as sort of my third pillar of my ritual, I like to do something for a guide or a spirit, a saint. I practice hoodoo, so I work with sort of a mixture of Orisha and Ifá, and also, you know, some Catholic saints even get thrown in there.

Michelle Tea: I love how it's very elaborate, but it doesn't feel unnecessarily so it feels very thoughtful and focused and grounded, but like bringing in a lot of really cool energy.

Did it inspire you in any way around ancestry and thinking about ancestors around new moon ritual?

Vera Blossom: Hearing about Ashley do sort of ancestral veneration of, of a very direct ancestor, her grandmother. It it felt kind of different for me.

I can't do that sort of magic because I don't really talk to my direct ancestors. And I have this disconnection from my dad and my grandparents. I really only talk to my mom and my sister. But it did inspire me to sort of think about a grander ancestral veneration.

I'm Filipino-American and the Philippines is this very diverse island nation. That's where I come from, but I don't know very much about it.

So I wanted to try and reconnect with that and maybe try and find my own magic and my own grounding the way Ashley did with with her grandmother and her practice.

Michelle Tea: Gosh, that is so beautiful and so cool, and it really makes me think about how, you know, so many queer people are estranged, you know, we're estranged from our immediate family or even our larger family.

Any notion of family at all can be really alienating and alien because of trauma. But it seems like doing this kind of ancestor work can be a really beautiful way to plug into familial energy that is caring and loving and supportive and unconditional when perhaps your immediate living ancestors aren't capable of of doing that for you. What was your new moon ritual like? How did you sort of make it your own? How did it go down?

Vera Blossom: I pretty much modeled my new moon ritual after Ashley's. 

I mean, I will admit it was a little austere. It did not look like the aesthetic Instagram photos I see of other people's rituals. No crystals.

We don't really have a lot of magic-y paraphernalia. It was just me and my three roommates sitting around our table from Ikea. And instead of a cauldron, I had a little pink ceramic bowl from Target.

Michelle Tea: So did you work with manifestations? Did you come up with manifestations?

Vera Blossom: So me and my roommates gathered around together, we thought about what we wanted and what we needed for this next month, wrote them down on pieces of paper, and then recited them out loud together.

Vera Blossom: I'll do things at my own pace. Even when work asks me to eat at the edges of my energy, I will rest. I will work towards justice and equity.

Michelle Tea: Those are such good manifestations. Whatever the month, whatever the astrological influences in the new moon like, the moon wants us to rest. Like the moon is the gentle orb in the sky that wants us to rest, does not want us to eat at the edges of our energy. It's such a great way to say that. And it wants justice and equity because it wants harmony. Right. And that's what can bring harmony and serenity to our to our land, you know, is justice. Those are so good. What did you guys after you spoke them out loud, did you do anything, like, tangible with them?

Vera Blossom: Yeah. So we went around together and we tore up our manifestations that we had written down into tiny little pieces of paper. And then we went around in a circle and put them in that pink ceramic bowl and lit them on fire. And we let them become ash and smoke and release them back into the universe.  

Michelle Tea: That's so great, so at the end of it all, how do you feel after having done your first ritual and having it been one that you put so much, you know, investigation and research and and work into?

Vera Blossom: I think at times I was worried that I wasn't going to get it because I had never done a ritual before. I'd never done ritual magic before. But as I was doing it, thinking about my Filipino ancestors, it's an island nation and they're always traveling across water. And they were expert seafarers.

And I thought about how they thought about what phase the moon was in and where it was in the sky to figure out where they were going, how high the tide would be, when to harvest, when to gather, like what time it was. And it was just this huge, important thing in their life. And connecting with the moon, it sort of felt like connecting with this this real sense of time and rhythm, like this internal clock that we're supposed to have.

And in doing that, I felt closer not just to my ancestors and their way of life, but to the people who came before them to the early Homo sapiens from hundreds of thousands of years ago when they were just human beings walking around under the moon.

[Music]

Michelle Tea: Well, like the moon in its final phase, this episode is waning. I hope we’ve left you with a smidgen of mystery (that’s the official unit of measure for mystery, btw, smidgen). Mystery is what keeps me coming back to magic, just the impossibility of every solving its riddles. But also, I hope we’ve de-mystified it for you, also. It doesn’t have to be so precious. You can buy your spell supplies at Michael’s. You can make up your own new moon ritual, offer a greeting to an ancestor, just figure it out as you go along, guided by traditions, but ultimately customizing a spiritual practice that fits your own weird, beautiful, inspired self just right. 

[Music]

Michelle Tea: Thanks for tuning into Your Magic. You can follow us on twitter and instagram, @thisisyourmagic, as well as subscribe to us here on Spotify so you never miss an episode. Please sign up for our newsletter at thisisyourmagic.com; not only will you get Phoebe Bridgers's special scripting spell sent straight to your mailbox this week, you also get an exclusive outtake from our guests and original content every Monday.  If you want to drop us a line you can email us at hello@thisisyourmagic.com. And finally, we highly recommend checking out Ashley Ray’s podcast, TV, I Say with Ashley Ray.

This episode was produced and edited by Molly Elizalde, Tony Gannon, and Vera Blossom. We got production support from Veronica Agard, Kristine Mar, and Raven Yamamoto. Special thanks to Scott Steiner. Our executive producers are Ben Cooley, myself, and Molly Elizalde. And our original theme music is by John Kimbrough. 

Join us next week for a conversation with Japanese Breakfast. And thanks for listening!