[Editor’s Note: This writing piece was written toward the collective writing anthology, She Summons: Why… calling to action for Goddess Feminism, Activism and Spirituality? Volume 1 Edited by Kaalii Cargill, Ph.D. and Helen Hye-Sook Hwang, Ph.D.]
Let’s face it, people, things had gotten out of hand and there was no way to fix it. Donald Trump and his minions, Mitch McConnell in particular, are a threat to every living thing on earth. Trump sees no reason not to use nukes. McConnell is stacking our courts with reactionary judges and preventing needed legislation from even being debated in the Senate. The attempts to remove Trump from office were thwarted by sheer corruption. We’re not the only country with the problem of creeping Fascism or Authoritarianism, either. China’s authoritarian bent led them to hide the prevalence and origins of the virus and let it loose on the rest of us. I blame their government for that, not the people. The Saudi Royal Family, known for their oppressive, corrupt and misogynist ways, has 150 members and counting who have tested positive and they’re asking for a ceasefire in Yemen where they were committing war crimes. Fox News Hosts are speaking favorably about Andrew Yang and Universal Basic Income. Cities around our country are building shelter for the homeless so they can “shelter in place.” Our pollution levels are way down since everything is shut down and the earth is shaking less. Wildlife is reclaiming much of its territory – sea turtles laid millions of eggs on deserted beaches for the first time in decades. Gaia is breathing a sigh of relief as She enjoys the break created by the timeout She has put us in.
I’ve been saying for years that if we didn’t get back in Harmony with Gaia’s living body, Her immune system would slough us off like a virus. I expected a volcano or a polar shift to wreak havoc on the human race and leave few if any survivors. Gaia is kinder and smarter than that, though – She’s our Mother, after all – and She found a way to make us return to our homes and stop our wasteful, filthy activities for a while. The collapse of the American stock market showed us that all that wealth only existed on paper or in hard drives – a little lack of confidence in our President’s dismal response to a crisis and POOF! It was gone. We have let our society come to revolve around the maintenance and well being of Wall Street instead of things that have real value. Our shelter at home process has shown us who is really vital to the survival of the culture – doctors and nurses, of course, hospital workers, but also those who stock the shelves in supermarkets and drive the trucks to keep them supplied with food. The farmworkers who keep those trucks filled with food are more vital to this economy and the well being of our people than any CEO or hedge fund manager I can think of. Those farmworkers don’t even make our paltry minimum wage. We begrudge those supermarket workers a living wage. Our priorities are being shown in stark contrast to the way we’ve been conducting this society.
Another horrifying statistic is the Covid-19 death rates for people of color. We’ve known our society and economy were based, from the founding of America, on systemic racism and inequality. The stress of living in a racist society is profound and every aspect of Covid-19, from the lack of access to testing to the disparity in how people are treated in hospitals, is showing in the increased frequency of death among people of color who contract the virus. People are claiming that those populations are more genetically inclined to certain pre-morbid conditions like diabetes, high blood pressure and heart disease, but all of those conditions, while aggravated by stress, can be traced back to food in the majority of cases. Poverty means you eat what you can afford and the affordable foods in this culture are junk – grains, sugar, empty carbohydrates that cause hyperinsulinemia that progresses into diabetes, heart disease and high blood pressure. Speaking of food, cars are lining up in some areas by the thousands to get food at food banks. In the meantime, food intended for sale to restaurants is being trashed – milk poured on the ground, vegetables plowed under – rather than being diverted to those hungry people. Again, our priority is to keep prices up instead of to see that the hungry are fed.
Sisters, we are indeed being Summoned by our Goddess – to rise up, to educate people about other ways to conduct a society that is people-based rather than focused on fantasies of infinite economic growth. Any Witch can tell you that energy exists in a spiral – there’s no such thing as continual linear growth, not in markets or anything else. Power and energy ebb and flow and we need to adapt to those natural rhythms. We have to stop demanding that people prove that they are worthy of existence. People have a right to live, period. Governments are supposed to serve all people and to care for the general welfare of everyone. Ours is failing miserably.
Our society may be on the brink of collapse. Or this may just be a period of turmoil that rises and then passes away. Either way, what had been considered normal was not working for the masses of people in this country. If the system does collapse, we have to be visible and vocal in helping to direct the way forward. We need to educate people about Gift Economies, where people get what they need without barter, about Universal Basic Income where every member of a society shares in the common wealth of that society. We need to tax those who can afford to pay taxes instead of bleeding workers dry as they struggle to exist. Work can get done without wage slavery. We have to have Universal Health Care because the sick deserve to be healed and cared for – those needs have to be met without regard for payment. It is not communism to expect a person who works full time to be able to afford a roof over their head and food for their family. It is not communism to say that every person eats before anyone goes back for seconds, or that every person should have a home before anyone has 2. There are 3 empty houses sitting unoccupied for every homeless person in this country, yet half a million of us live in the streets. That’s unhealthy and dangerous and simply wrong. We have to care for the least among us or we are less than human. Cities in America have shown that it is cheaper to provide people with homes and caseworkers than to shuffle them around from street to jails to hospitals. So why haven’t we? If cost were really all we cared about, this would be done.
Most importantly, we have to get back in harmony with the body of our Mother the Earth. We do not need more coal mines. We do not need more oil. Fracking must be stopped completely – it pollutes groundwater with unknown chemicals, making tap water literally flammable and it destabilizes the tectonic plates, causing earthquakes by the hundreds in areas that never saw them before. We have massive deforestation happening to grow palm oil, a substance no one should be eating to begin with. Stop it! Those lands being stripped are the natural habitats of wild animals we need and, in many cases, they’re the ancestral homes of indigenous groups who have every right to continue there without having civilization violently imposed on them.
Colonialism everywhere has to end! We should demand that all Christian Missionaries be banned from molesting Indigenous peoples everywhere in the world and the Catholic church, as well as protestant sects like the Mormons who followed, must be made to pay reparations for the harm they’ve done to the tribal peoples of the world. Religions should not be allowed to function as businesses without paying taxes. The genius of our Founders was to separate State and Religion and that separation needs to be re-established and enforced.
This world is being held in abject misery by rich, mostly old, mostly white men. I don’t think it’s an accident that the virus affects men twice as often as it does women, or that it rarely affects children. Patriarchy has been a literal scourge in the body of our Mother and those who would preserve it must be stopped. Voting is only the first step. We have to learn better ways to produce healthy food (and by healthy, I mean meat and vegetables, not grains or sugar) with regenerative farming practices as we break up Big Agro. that mass produces corn, wheat and soy we shouldn’t be eating.. We have to get the profit motive out of our healthcare system and put the wellbeing of people at the center of it. We need to put people in all the empty homes so they don’t have to live on the street. And we need to learn to conduct our lives without mining, polluting or working people to death. This virus is an opportunity to break down a broken system and build something kinder, better, greener. Goddess must come out loud and proud and show people that humans once lived happier lives before patriarchy and we can do it again.
Morgaine Swann is a Feminist Witch living on a mountain in Eastern Kentucky. Her activism is focused on Universal Basic Income, Matriarchal Values, Democratic Socialism and advocating for a Ketogenic diet to reverse the effects of Hyperinsulinemia. She has lost over 100 pounds in just under a year and is no longer Diabetic to Hypertensive after adopting a diet of primarily pastured meats, healthy fats and green vegetables. Eat Real Food!
(Meet Mago Contributor) Morgaine Swann.