The Worker's Cauldron

In this episode of "The Workers Cauldron," we delve into the intersection of feminist paganism and direct action through the lens of Starhawk and her cohorts' activism against nuclear power in the 1980s.

We navigate the rich history and dynamic landscape of the feminist pagan movement, exploring how spiritual practices intertwined with feminist ideals fuelled a potent form of activism. Drawing on the writings of Starhawk, a prominent figure in both feminist and pagan circles, the episode unpacks the significance of reclaiming feminine power in the face of environmental destruction and patriarchal oppression.

Bonus features: Anarcha-Feminism, EcoFeminism, Spiritual Feminism, Socialist Feminism, all the feminisms.

Sources:

Barbara Epstein, Political Protest and Cultural Revolution: Nonviolent Direct Action in the 1970s and 1980s

Starhawk, Dreaming the Dark: Magic, Sex, and Politics
       The Spiral Dance: a Rebirth of the Ancient Religion of the Great Goddess

Cynthia Eller: Living in the Lap of the Goddess: The Feminist Spirituality Movement in America

Margot Adler, Drawing Down the Moon: Witches, Druids, Goddess-Worshippers, and Other Pagans in America Today

Merlin Stone: When God Was a Woman

Carol Christ and Judith Plaskow (ed): Womanspirit Rising: A Feminist Reader in Religion

Susan Griffin, Woman and Nature: The Roaring Inside Her

Peggy Kornegger: Anarchism: The Feminist Connection

Françoise d'Eaubonne, Le Féminisme ou la Mort

Ynestra King: The Ecology of Feminism and the Feminism of Ecology

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On this episode of The Workers Cauldron, we discuss the schism between radical and cultural feminists in the 1970s. We focus on the life and works of Z Budapest, who founded the Susan B. Anthony Coven no. 1 in 1970, the first of many covens devoted to what she termed “Dianic Wicca.” This reformulation of Wicca was staunchly feminist and believed men could only be initiated into the craft when true gender equality was won.

Sources:

Cynthia Eller, Living in the Lap of the Goddess: The Feminist Spirituality Movement in America

Alice Echols, Daring to Be Bad: Radical Feminism in America 1967-1975

Margot Adler, Drawing Down the Moon: Witches, Druids, Goddess-Worshippers, and Other Pagans in America Today

Kristy S. Coleman, Re-riting Woman: Dianic Wicca and the Feminine Divine

Julia Kubula, Teaching “Bad Feminism”: Mary Daly and the Legacy of ’70s Lesbian-Feminism

Shai Feraro, “The Goddess is Alive. Magic is Afoot.”: Radical and Cultural Feminist Influences on Z Budapest’s Dianic Witchcraft During the 1970s–1980s

Zsuzsanna E. Budapest, My Dark Sordid Past As A Heterosexual: First Destiny

Deborah Netburn, This feminist witch introduced California to Goddess worship

Roz Kaveney, Why won't pagans accept trans women?

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In this episode, we tackle the contentious Radical Feminist movement, particularly the actions of the Women's International Terrorist Conspiracy from Hell, aka W.I.T.C.H. We discuss the shifting political ideas of W.I.T.C.H co-founder Robin Morgan and consider how the contradictions within radical feminism--a movement of women who criticized the root of patriarchal society-- gave way to cultural feminism, which held the seeds of a burgeoning feminist spirituality movement.

Sources
Jo Freeman, WITCH

Redstockings, Miss America Protest

WITCH Manifesto,

Robin Morgan, Goodbye to All That
Sisterhood is Powerful, An Anthology of Writings from the Womens Liberation Movement

Elizabeth Gould Davis, The First Sex

Matilda Joslyn Gage, Woman, Church and State

Alice Echols, Daring to be Bad: Radical Feminism in America 1967-1975

Ronald Hutton, The Triumph of the Moon: A History of Modern Pagan Witchcraft

Susan Brownmiller, In Our Time: Memoir of a Revolution

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We are publishing a more relaxed episode this month as we prepare for the next series. Brenda Salguera of the Monstras: Latinx Monsters and Folklore podcast joins us to discuss the strange case of flying humanoids(but maybe illegal gold miners with jetpacks) In Loreto, Peru that made headlines last month.

Sources from Radio Programas del Perú:
"They are aliens!": Loreto residents denounce the presence of strange beings that attack them at night

Loreto: Police and Navy arrived at community where residents reported presence of aliens

Prosecutor's Office believes it is likely that illegal miners are behind the appearance of "strange beings" in Loreto

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This month, Dr. Jennifer Koshatka Seman joins us to talk about her book Borderlands Curanderos: The Worlds of Santa Teresa Urrea and Don Pedrito Jaramillo. We focus on the life of Teresa Urrea, a folk saint and spiritual healer in late 19th century Mexico that inspired indigenous and poor workers from the borderlands of Mexico to rise up against the Presidency of Porfirio Diaz.

Jennifer Koshatka Seman, Borderlands Curanderos: The Worlds of Santa Teresa Urrea and Don Pedrito Jaramillo

Charles Wollenberg, Working on El Traque: The Pacific Electric Strike of 1903

Brandon Bayne, From Saint to Seeker, Teresa Urrea's Search for a Place of Her Own

Barbara June Macklin and N. Ross Crumrine, Three North Mexican Folk Saint Movements

Gilbert M. Joseph and Jurgen Buchenau, Mexico's Once and Future Revolution, Social Upheaval and the Challenge of  Rule since the Late Nineteenth Century, Chapter Two, Porfirian Modernization and its Costs.

Telegrams, Multiculturalism: Are We Celebrating or Appropriating? (Guest Post by Dr. Jennifer Koshatka Seman)

David Dorado Romo, Ringside Seat to a Revolution: An Underground Cultural History of El Paso and Juarez, 1893-1923,

Nicole M. Guidotti-Hernández, Unspeakable Violence: Remapping U.S. and Mexican National Imaginaries

Paul Vanderwood, The Power of God Against the Guns of Government: Religious Upheaval in Mexico at the Turn of the Nineteenth Century 

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There is a peculiar phantom rumored to haunt the rural roads of the South American Andes. The pishtaco takes the form of a tall, well-dressed white man who steals the fat from the bodies of the region's indigenous inhabitants. We explore how this monster was born out of the horrors of colonization and how it recreates itself throughout the history of Peru as the personification of oppression.

Sources:

Mary Weismantel, Cholas and Pishtacos: Stories of Race and Sex in the Andes

Ernesto Vasquex Del Aguila, Pishtacos: Human Fat Murderers, Structural Inequalities and Resistances in Peru

Anthony Oliver-Smith, The Pishtaco: Institutionalized Fear in Highland Peru

Peter Gose, Sacrifice and the Commodity Form in the Andes 

The Guardian: Gang 'killed victims to extract their fat'

Time,  Peru's Fat-Stealing Gang: Crime or Cover-Up?

Democracy Now: Peruvian Police Accused of Massacring Indigenous Protesters in Amazon Jungle

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Francois "Papa Doc" Duvalier's administration was portrayed as a "Voodoo Dictatorship" by the Western press due to his tense relationship with the Catholic Church and his conflicting approach to the nation's Vodou beliefs. However, the claims of his political use of the religion's spirits and beliefs are based on shaky foundations. On this episode of The Worker's Cauldron, we try to shift through competing claims in an attempt to uncover the true history Haiti's right-wing dictator.

Sources:
David Nicholls,  From Dessalines to Duvalier: Race, Colour and National Independence in Haiti
John Cussans, Undead Uprising: Haiti, Horror and The Zombie Complex
Michel-Rolph Trouillot, Haiti, State Against Nation: Origins and Legacy of Duvalierism
Michel S. Laguerre, Voodoo and Politics in Haiti
Robert Lawless, Haiti's Bad Press: Origins, Development, and Consequences
Kate Ramsay, The Spirits and the Law: Vodou and Power in Haiti
Tampa Bay Times: Haiti’s Recognition of Voodoo Brings New Freedom to Faithful
Whicker’s World: Papa Doc: The Black Sheep

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Focusing on the years between American military occupation and the dictatorship of Francois "Papa Doc" Duvalier in Haiti, the Workers Cauldron Podcast examines the ways in which Haitian literary groups represented the African diaspora religion of Vodou. After being moved by indiginisme, an ethnological movement to ground Haitian identity in its African past,  future dictator Francois Duvalier helped to organize a group of black nationalist or noiriste writers called Les Griots who rebelled against the enlightenment principles of republican democracy.

Sources:
David Nicholls: Politics and Religion in Haiti  From Dessalines to Duvalier: Race, Colour and National Independence in Haiti
  Ideology and Political Protest in Haiti, 1930-46

John Cussans: Undead Uprising: Haiti, Horror and The Zombie Complex

Michel-Rolph Trouillot: Haiti, State Against Nation: Origins and Legacy of Duvalierism

Michel S. Laguerre: Voodoo and Politics in Haiti

Mathew J. Smith: Red and Black in Haiti: Radicalism, Conflict, and Political Change, 1934-1957

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In the final episode of our 2022 season, we discuss the rise of a bizarre cryptid popularly called The Dogman. We explore the works of the late great Linda Godfrey, who passed away on November 27 of this year, and her role in popularizing Wisconsin’s Beast of Bray Road and the Michigan Dogman. Over the last decade, the monster has grown from humble rural origins into a cryptid of international fame.


Linda Godfrey: The Beast of Bray Road: Tailing Wisconsin's Werewolf
Real Wolfmen: True Encounters in Modern America
"The Gable Film"
Yorkshire Post: '˜Truth' behind those sightings of Hull's Beast of Barmston Drain werewolf
Monsterquest: America’s Wolfman Caught on Film
PBS: The Beast of Bray Road
Michael Barkun: A Culture of Conspiracy: Apocalyptic Visions in Contemporary America
Neal Arnold: Monster!: The A-Z of Zooform Phenomena
Diane E. Goldstein, Sylvia Ann Grider, Jeannie B. Thomas: Haunting Experiences: Ghosts in Contemporary Folklore
Hauntings and Poltergeists: Multidisciplinary Perspectives

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We continue our journey into the intersections of gay liberation and the neopagan movements with a discussion of Eddie Buczynski  a young witch, brought under the wing of famed gay witch Leo Martello, who founded the Minoan Brotherhood--combining what he believed to be ancient goddess worship with a new mystery cult for gay men. We then discuss the pagan turn of Arthur Evans, formerly the strategist for the Gay Activist Alliance, with the 1978 publication of Witchcraft and the Gay Counterculture. Finally, we dive into the Radical Faeries, organized by gay rights pioneer Harry Hay, who sought to create a new, gay spirituality. We also our joined by Lisa Grimm of the Beer Ladies Podcast to talk about Margaret Murray and the witch cult hypothesis.

Sources
Margot Adler, Drawing Down the Moon

Michael Lloyd, Bull of Heaven: The Mythic Life of Eddie Buczynski & the Rise of the New York Pagan

Arthur Evans, Witchcraft and the Gay Counterculture

Peter Hennen, Faeries, Bears, and Leathermen: Men in Community Queering the Masculine

Stuart Timmons, The Trouble With Harry Hay: Founder of the Modern Gay Movement

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