10 
Magickal Conspiracy
Conspiring Into a New Dream
At the root, to conspire means to breath together. In common usage it means planning with others to do something unlawful, but it also means to work toward a common goal. All of these things are elements that may lead to new and vital magickal coalitions.
It is clear that becoming allies to those who have struggles different from your own is not enough. We need to become more to each other; we need to enter into conspiracies together.
Are you ready to put your body on the line in support of the people with whom you consider yourself to be allied? Are you coming to this knowing that these struggles are not someone else’s struggles—that these struggles are collectively our struggles?
Are you willing to stand in the path of “progress,” and take a stance against the ongoing desecration of the Earth? Are you ready to break trespassing laws in order to support Indigenous land claims, and the claims of the Earth herself?
Are you willing to take shifts in the kitchen making food to support those who are on the front lines? Are you ready to loan your voice to a larger cry for justice? Are you ready to be part of the seeking for solutions, collectively?
Are you ready to use your privileges—whatever they are—as a tool for culture disruption? Instead of apologizing for your advantages—or worse, denying them—are you ready to pick them up and use them to actively shift culture in whatever ways you are able?
Are you willing to stand in front of the bulldozers as they destroy homes?
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Rachel Corrie was an American activist who was killed in Rafah in the southern part of the Gaza Strip on March 16, 2003. Rachel and a number of other activists were attempting to protect the homes of Palestinians from armored bulldozers being operated in the occupied territories by the Israeli Defense Forces. Rachel stood her ground in a safety-orange jacket and was run over repeatedly by the operator of the bulldozer. She was twenty-three at the time of her death. |
Whatever our level of ability and consciousness is, that is where we start. We start by having conversations, by making different purchasing choices, by reaching out into your communities and starting conspiracies of love and magick.
We begin by asking difficult questions of ourselves and our communities; asking who is not present, and asking what we may do to create the openings in ourselves to invite the unknown into our circles in ways that are conscious.
We start by raising the children of our communities with awareness of consent and with strong spirits. By making places for dancing and playing and learning and loving at the center of our revolution.
We must be willing to take fire for our beliefs. We must be willing to go deep and address the root of things. We must be willing to enter into the edges of our own capacity in order to find our way to a shared knowing and doing and being.
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JOURNAL: In what ways could you use your privilege to make changes in your community? In the world? |
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ACTION: Decide upon an action you can take now, and take it. It could be something as simple as writing a letter to a representative. Or you could begin looking at the areas you haven’t taken into account before now. |
We Don’t Need Another Hero
In answering the questions asked above it is also important to ask yourself if you are ready to stand—or sit—in the background, listening and learning, when you come into a new community. Are you ready to bring an open mind instead of a head full of answers?
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Three ways to successfully destroy a budding connection: |
What is your motivation in seeking this collaboration? Are you hoping for glory? Are you seeking to assuage your guilt? Are you taking on a struggle because it is something you feel as though you should support? Are you adventuring, spectating, or speculating? It is essential in taking on the work of collaboration and conscious conspiracy that we examine our motivations and look at them in relationship to our concepts of power and authority.
When entering into a movement or an action that has history, it is your responsibility to research it, study it, learn it, and make sure that you know how to enter into collaboration from a place that will be truly helpful and will offer reliable and useful support.
It’s simple, but it bears mention: if you’re new to a scene remind yourself that it’s not yours to take over. Enter in humility. Look to the existing leadership. Learn the ways of the culture or community with whom you are seeking to conspire.
Keep in mind that just because your position or privileges may confer a certain visibility upon you, this does not automatically make you the expert in an action or movement you are working to support.
Systemic racism works this way. Let’s say, for example, that you are joining a blockade action against the Keystone XL Pipeline under the leadership of the decentralized, worldwide, grassroots Indigenous movement, Idle No More. And let’s say you are white and an environmental scientist by trade. Considering your vocation and training, the media may look to you for a soundbite; you are visible as an expert on the topic at hand after all … and you’re white. However, unless you have been charged specifically by the leadership of the blockade to be a spokesperson, you are not the proper representative.
While stopping the progress of the pipeline is the issue visible to you, the legal grounds for the blockade are treaty violations and the issue of tribal sovereignty. If you were to give an interview, your vantage would potentially decenter the claim of the First Nations and Native American people whose campaign you were trying to support.
Entering into a movement or community as a beginner may be challenging. You may have years—or even decades—of experience with political organizing and direct action. You may be a trainer who people hire to come into organizations and share your skills. But if you have not been asked to do so in the setting you have stepped into, then don’t. Your way of organizing or style of leadership may not fit there. No one asked you to enter as an expert.
Enter as a warrior, a soldier, a comrade, a healer, a servant to the greater struggle. Do not assume that just because you don’t recognize the strategies at play, that there are no strategies. Observe. Respectfully ask questions when you don’t understand. Watch. Listen. Learn.
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JOURNAL: Have you ever unconsciously taken over a conversation or interaction? Have you consciously done so? How would you enter into that interaction now? |
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ACTION: Attend a meeting or event that you did not participate in planning. Observe. Respectfully open yourself to conversation. Respectfully ask questions. Respectfully support the work already being done. |
Cocreation, not Coalition
White Feminism is a thing, and if you haven’t heard about it, that probably means you need to. It might mean that the feminism that you think of as plain old feminism is actually White Feminism, which is non-intersectional. In White Feminism, the issues, angles, and perspectives of white women are the central focal point.
One of the major failings of White Feminism is that the white feminist movement asks for solidarity from our multiracial feminist and Black womanist sisters, but offers none in return. White Feminism treats white concerns as normative or centrist and the concerns of Women of Color as fringe or marginal.
For instance, White feminism treats the topic of choice as if there were only one valid arena to operate that choice within. White Feminism hasn’t taken to heart that reproductive justice is a larger topic than access to birth control and the right to abortion. The white feminist movement hasn’t joined with our Native American and Black sisters in calling for recognition of the history and ongoing instances of forced sterilization, the taking of infants and children out of their families and cultures, the right to spiritually aligned means for bodily autonomy. White Feminism hasn’t looked at this issue from the vantage that makes it clear that prison reform and even the consideration of abolition of the prison industrial complex are reproductive justice issues. It has not acknowledged that profiling and enforcement are issues that tie directly into reproductive justice.
Even thugh personal freedom—including the freedom to dress as you choose—is considered a central element of the message of the mainstream feminist movement, white feminism hasn’t fought at the side of our Muslim sisters against laws that remove their agency by outlawing the wearing of items of religious dress. And even more damning than inaction, you can easily find white feminists who agree with the so-called burqa ban.
Members of the Ukrainian feminist shock group Femen are known for topless protesting. A favored focus of Femen protests is “liberating” women from the coverings that many Muslim women wear; not just the full length burqa but also the headscarf called hijab. Femen members believe they have the right to be topless in public, but do not support the right of Muslim women to wear a scarf over their heads. Is it as ironic as it is offensive, or as offensive as it is ironic? (You decide!)
The idea of liberating women from choice is as ironic as it is offensive.
White feminism still speaks of the wage gap as being 74 cents (give or take) on the male dollar without realizing that this number is white women making an average of 74 cents on the white male dollar. The wage gap exists as an intersecting grid with more disparity the further to the edges you get.
White feminism holds whiteness at the center. It has moved on to wage-parity while women and girls in the majority world are still struggling to get a basic education and access to health care. White feminism argues about whether it’s feminist to wear makeup while Muslim sisters are being told by minority world governments that they cannot wear religious dress and by other majority world governments that they must.
At the same time, the white feminist movement thinks we can tell women of other cultures how to be feminists. White feminism holds that there is one way to be a feminist, and that if you don’t believe in the banner issues of mainstream feminism, you are not a feminist. In its restrictive scope, white feminism operates as part of the system of white supremacy.
Something to remember when seeking engagement is that your issue is not the issue. Your normal is not the normal. Your experience is not universal. You are not the only center of the universe; everything is its own center in its own expanding field.
When you invite someone to join your struggle, action, or campaign, you are asking for their support. Instead, what if we built matrices of support that were about relationship, cocreation, and conspiracy? What if we put our efforts on living, dreaming, learning, building a new aeon together? What if our cocreations and collaborations were about finding our way to the sacred ground where we can stand together and know that the differences that make us who we are is the context that lends tensile strength to the process—and ultimate outcome—of our shared liberation?
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JOURNAL: In what ways have you proscribed feminism? Are you willing to let go of your definition of feminism in order to make space for addressing our collective struggles? |
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ACTION: Study a feminism or other movement for equality that you aren’t familiar with. Indigenous feminism, post-colonialist feminism, multicultural feminism, Muslim feminism, Black womanism, queer liberation movement. Study with an open heart and mind. Remember that respectful acknowledgment and honoring of our differences makes our movement toward liberation stronger. |
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Three Ways to Grow Your Loving Community: |
Breathing Into It
In seeking to create magickal conspiracies we must stay in our breath, in our hearts, in our beings. Bringing ourselves into harmony with a larger dream will be a long road. It will take many conversations, many arguments, many nights of dancing and lovemaking, many days of planting and harvesting ideas and food and relationship. It will take making art and plans and building families and communities.
In our building we will tie ourselves to the sacred, weaving ourselves through it and into it, hold hands and walk together. We will hold each other in the sacred. We will see the sacred in the faces of our children, our sisters, our daughters, our mothers, our aunties, our grandmothers, our old women. We will see her faces in these faces.
And we will march and dance and hike and walk and move into more and more intricate pathways with each other. With any journey, you can’t know the actual terrain ahead of time. Once the journey gets underway, you may find that you don’t actually even know the direction you need to go. You may have to toss your map and find your way by relying only upon your senses and help from your sisters who have taken to the road too. Help may come in the form of advice from those who have set up camp, started a village, or found her place in a town or a city.
You may find some evening that you are tired of walking, and you may ask someone if you can sit at her fire for a while. You may share conversation and food. You may dream together under the night sky. And you may become aware in that moment that you have found your way home.
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JOURNAL: What maps have you thought were useful, then realized you needed to let go of? |
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ACTION: Go somewhere you haven’t been before. Reach out. Begin seeking new sisterhoods. |