August 31, 2018

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History 🏛️ | Permanently Moved 🔊 | Sorcery 🧞

Episode 21

It started off as a simple show about the great abolitionist Harriet Tubman, but unexpectedly spun out into occult left history, criticism of the awful the law of return, and a soft landing via peter greys rewilding witchcraft.

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Permanently moved is a personal podcast 301 seconds in length, written and recorded in one hour by @thejaymo

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Get Down On Your Knees..

 Do you know much about Harriet Tubman? I’m sure the Americans amongst us do. But for the others, Harriet Tubman was born in 1822 and died 1913. She was an American abolitionist and political activist. Born into slavery, Tubman escaped and subsequently made some 13 missions to rescue approximately 70 enslaved people. Families, and friends using the network of anti slavery activists and safe houses known as the Underground Railroad.

Tubman was devout, and she began experiencing powerful visionary and dream experiences which occurred throughout her life after sustaining a traumatic head injury as a child. She interpreted them as revelations from God.

She began having seizures and would seemingly fall unconscious, although she claimed to be aware of her surroundings whilst appearing to be asleep. These episodes were alarming to her family, who were unable to wake her when she fell asleep suddenly without warning. This condition remained with her for the rest of her life.

In modern times, it has been suggested that she had suffered from temporal lobe epilepsy as a result of the injury. As a result of all of this, Edward Brodess, her owner, tried to sell her, but could not find a buyer. Angry at his action and unjust hold he kept on her relatives, Tubman began to pray for her owner, asking God to make him change his ways.

I prayed all night long for my master, she said later, till the first of March and all of the time he was bringing people to look at me and trying to sell me. When it appeared as though the sale was being concluded, I changed my prayer. 1st of March, I began to pray, “Oh Lord, if you ain’t never gonna change that man’s heart, Kill him. Lord, take him out of the way.”

And a week later, Brodess died, and Tubman expressed regret for her earlier sentiments. Later in life, the visions from her childhood injury continued, and she saw them as divine premonitions. She spoke of consulting with God, and trusted that He would keep her safe.

Thomas Garrett once said of her, “I never met any person of any color who had more confidence in the voice of God as spoken direct to her soul. “

Harriet Tubman is an important voice and figure, not just on the American left, but also for human rights globally. Her visions and conversations with God, however, seem, in this modern age, to be swept under the carpet.

An epileptic, vision having, old time religion, curse throwing woman. And that is the best kind of activist. I sometimes think that there’s real scope to write the occulted history of the left, from the strong and powerful women involved in the spiritualist movement, that later gave birth to feminism, or new thoughts influence on the civil rights movement.

But there’s also Rosa Luxemburg’s Speaking Tour of America, paid for, sponsored by, and she spoke at Theosophist Lodges. I find there’s something interesting in these troubled times, of the rise, or the renaissance, of a magical movement. Of the witchy aesthetic, the insta witch. I my witchy femmes. But the movement seems bound quite literally by the awful law of return.

Throw curses, hex your boss, get what you want by whatever beads necessary. Peter Gray in Rewilding witchcraft opens with how tame we have become. How polite about our witchcraft in our desire to harm? None. We have become harmless. We have bargained to get a seat at the table of the great faiths to whom we remain anathema.

How much compromises have we made in our private practice for the mighty freedom of being able to wear pewter pentagrams in public and at school? How much have our elders sold us out? Genuflecting to the Academy, the Establishment, the tabloid press, in return for the bargain that we have gained precisely nothing.

The supposed freedoms we have been granted are empty. Late capitalist culture simply does not care what our fantasy dress up life is like, as long as we work our zero hours contracts, carry our mobile phones, and keep consuming. End quote. So in the immortal words of Bill Monroe,

“Get on your knees and pray.

Get on, get on, get on, get on your knees and pray.“