Happy Pride month! Today I'm talking to Austin Fuller of BanexBramble, cohost of the Southern Bramble podcast. Austin talks to us about perfume, building community where you live, and why you should mess up your life on purpose. Before we get to the stories, let me invite you to a new online community! Click below to join the new Your Average Witch Podcast Hive House group for a fun new place to hang out, swap spells, and maybe throw down on meme war mondays.

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Austin Fuller,

witch perfumier of BaneXBramble and Southern Bramble Podcast

Welcome back to Your Average Witch Podcast brought to you by Clever Kim's Curios, where we talk about witch life, witch stories, and sometimes a little witchcraft on Tuesday every week. Happy Pride Month! Today I'm talking to Austin Fuller of BanexBramble, co-host of the Southern Bramble podcast. Austin talks to us about perfume, building community where you live, and why you should mess up your life on purpose. Before we get to the stories, I just want to tell you about a new opportunity for online community building. Search Facebook for the new Your Average Witch Podcast Hive House Group for a fun new place to hang out, swap spells, and maybe throw down on Meme War Mondays. Now let's get to the stories!

Kim: Hi Austin, welcome to the show!

Austin: Hi, thank you for having me.

Kim: Thank you for being here. How are you? Are you are you good? 

Austin: I am, yeah, I'm as good as I can be in our... well, you know what? Let me not start off so bleakly. (laughs) I'm good. Yeah, I'll just say that. How are you?

Kim:  I feel it though. I'm warm and what more can I ask?

Austin: Every day is a new horror.

Kim: Seriously. Can you please introduce yourself and let everybody know who you are and what you do and where they can find you?

Austin: Yes. Hi, my name is Austin Fuller. I am the operator of the page BaneXBramble on Instagram is how I think most people find me. I am the co-host with Marshall, the Witch of Southern Light of the Southern Bramble podcast, a podcast of Crooked Ways. I live in West Central Florida amongst the sea, swamp, and forest. I am a folk witch, self-titled folk practitioner of witchcraft. I'm an artist, perfumer, a conjurer, diviner, I peddle my little witchy wares and monger off spirits and do a bunch of other things. Somebody has recently titled me a jack-of-all-trades and I think that's very fitting. Hopefully it wasn't an insult.

Kim: It sounds good.

Austin: Yeah, I'll take it.

Kim: I'm super interested in the perfumery part. I'm super interested.

Austin: Thank you. I just recently did a lecture for the Botanica Obscura conference on perfumery and witchcraft and that was really interesting and hopefully I'll be discussing more perfumery stuff in the... I think I'm known for doing perfumes, but it's something that I think a lot of people know about and yet don't know the behind the scenes stuff of it, which is always fun to talk about.

Kim: Yeah, the intricacies of smells. I'm here for it. 

Austin: Absolutely. 

Kim: I just love smells.

Austin: As we all do, it's so intricate. Especially to magic. I don't know if you're a Argento Suspiria fan, or if you've seen them, but the Three Mothers trilogy, like in Inferno, when the woman's reading the book that, the Three Mothers book that is by this alchemist that's telling her all about the Three Mothers and this cosmology. It explicitly expresses that the air around the Three Mothers is pestilent and has a strange sickly sweet smell. And this is something that goes throughout so many different themes and elements. The earliest that I can think of, even though it's far older than that, is Medea in the Argonauts, or the Argonautica, where she puts dragons to sleep by her perfumes. And she also is described as being very, smelling very sweetly like ambrosia and nectar, which is like what causes Jason to fall in love with her. So I'm rambling on now, but (laughs)...

Kim: You know what, if a dude or anyone, doesn't have to be a dude, whoever, if they smell good, I want to stand real close to them.

Austin: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Kim: I like how smells- okay, I love words because they can make me see things, but smells make me have, like, time travel.

Austin: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yeah, there are so many things linked to smell, especially like even my own witchcraft origin story, I guess, is linked to smelling Nag champa incense for like the first time at a psychic lounge when I was like four. And not having a word for that because I didn't know what that was, I was so young. And then many, many years later, at some like random gift shop smelling Nag Champa Agarbatti, like in the blue box that they sell at like gas stations, like any metaphysical shop. Yeah. And smelling that and being like, oh my god, this is what that is. This is what I've been like yearning for since I was like four years old. And I never had a name to put to it. And I think at the time I was probably like 10, 11, 12. And then being like, I'm obsessed with this, I'm going to work on making these things now.

Kim: Okay, that just took me on a little journey myself because remembering the first time I smelled it and then when I found it. I'm going to bring us to the present though. What would you, what does it mean to you when you call yourself a witch?

Austin: So the witch to me is, it's an accusatory term. This, I think, always sometimes might strike some people the wrong way, but I really do try as best as I possibly can to look back through both a practical, so my own experience, as well as an anthropological lens, so the actual study of magic and religion and its impact on culture, as well as folklore. So all of these things together really frame the witch for me. The witch is, again, an accusatory term. It's a political term. It's a judicial term, right, if we think of witchcraft as a crime. And it's not, currently, in America, thankfully, but there are so many other places in the world where it is still. 
So witchcraft being, or witch and witchcraft being an accusatory term, a term that is the result of a creature or a thing, a person who has exchanged, whether coerced or by force, or sometimes by choice, has exchanged a part of their humanity, a part of their, what defines them as human, in exchange for other parts of the other, the other worlds, the devil, the Fairy, the spirit world, the world unseen, the Wyrd. And in this exchange, we receive power, we gain power, we become something else, something other than human, a creature, a monster, some may say. 
And navigating these things and these terms, God, I sound like such an edgelord when I say it. I don't want to come off that way. But yes, the witch is a practitioner of malefica, a witch who traffics with, quote-unquote, the unclean, and who defines the unclean spirits, right? It's the culture, it's the church, it's so many different things. And the person who traffics with those spirits and who also transvex or trans, you know, shapeshifts, transfigures, transvex by flight, by trans-inducatory states,  is somebody who is able to leave their bodies and traverse within the spirit realm. So yeah, there's several different factors that I think goes into witchcraft and witch, but that's kind of how a brief, albeit rambling, philosophy of my witch.

Kim: I... that was fun to listen to.

Austin: Thank you.

Kim: Wow. Well, you mentioned being in, I've already forgotten the words you said. Something that sounded witchy when you were four. 

Austin: Oh, a psychics lounge, yeah. 

Kim: Yeah, you went to a psychics lounge when you were there when you were four years old. So do you have family history with witchcraft? 

Austin: Family history, no. I actually, I grew up very Protestant, very, I don't want to say WASP-y, I think that conjures up like images of like Ralph Lauren Polo. We were definitely not that. But I did grow up in a very secularized Protestent culture, like so many people did. However, from a very young age, I had very strange experiences. I've talked in other interviews before about a creature visiting me in dreams and making me do things for it as a young kid, you know, tormenting me, which it wasn't a pleasant experience, I'll say that. Not trying to glamorize those traumatic things. I grew up also in the swamp of the Everglades of Florida, and then we moved to a rural town in Missouri, close to Kansas City. And you know, I was a queer, or am a queer person, a queer kid growing up, and the juxtaposition of all these experiences. With the Psychics Lounge, I actually had a friend who was my uncle's girlfriend at the time, so she's much older than I am. I shouldn't say much, I think she'd be like, ugh! (both laugh) But she was quite a bit older than I am. She was probably in her 20s and I was four, but we were all hanging out. My uncle was watching me that day, I guess. 
She was a psychic, is a psychic, and took me to first metaphysical shop when I was four and that's when she had gotten me a reading. We had went to the back and there was a reader there and the few things that I remember was like votive candles, like the colored votive candles that was very reminiscent of the whimsigoth. That's what the kids are calling it these days. The whimsigoth, like very 90s, early 2000s, like with the with the colored votive glass, the purples and the greens and lots of jewel tones. And I remember the smell of the incense and the images on the card were very provocative to me. They were very interesting and esoteric to me. And I was like, I want these cards and I want the smell and I love this atmosphere and this ambiance. 
But it wasn't until much later, when again I was probably like 10, 11, 12, that I really pursued a study in magic and occultism, and at the time what I would have called witchcraft. Yeah, and that really developed from there. So I've been doing some sort of magic since I was a pretty young person. But as far as family history goes, not that I'm aware of. I do have some members in my family who may have been considered healers, folk healers of some sort, but that, you know, I have some trepidation to say that because there's not much that I can say more on that besides hearsay from like my grandmother. And so I'm always very cautious to try and frame that I have some sort of untethered pagan lineage that doesn't exist, you know.

Kim: That is not at all what I was doing when I was four. That sounds so...

Austin: I'm sure we were probably getting up to similar things. That one experience was really, you know, it was pretty singular. And then, of course, you know, seeing ghosts, seeing shadows, experiencing transvection or soul flight at a really young age, all of those things. But, you know, like I said, I grew up really, I grew up in a wonderful early 2000s time when Harry Potter was coming out and Pokemon was a big deal and all of those things. An interesting juxtaposition.

Kim: Mm-hmm. And you had a swamp, which sounds neat.

Austin: I did, yeah. Yeah, I definitely did. Our backyard was home to an alligator all year round. And then, to make ourselves sound really, really gorgeously country and backwoods, when the alligator would get too big, we would hunt it and then we would eat it. Which, alligator is not my favorite food, it's very rubbery. But yeah, you know, so there was always something going on. Living very close to nature until I actually became like 13 or so and then we moved to a sub rural area. So and I lived you know about 30 minutes outside of a major city, Kansas City, Missouri. So when I was 16...

Kim: That's a whole different world.

Austin: Yeah, it was great though. You know, I lived really close to the cemetery where Jesse James, who was a Confederate sympathizer, so let me not glamorize Jesse James, but very famous outlaw, very famous folk figure. I lived, you know, a quick walk away from where he was buried and I lived close to his home in Kearney, Missouri, which is where I went to high school. And then, you know, as soon as I turned 16 and I got a car, I was down in the city doing god knows what, every chance that I could. So it wasn't all devils all the time.

Kim: Let's come forward again. Do you, can you, what can you share with, what will you share with us about your practice? Do you have any regular or consistent rituals that you do? 

Austin: Yeah. Oh, that's a big one. That's a tough one, I guess, which sounds like I'm trying to be evasive, but I'm not. I'm trying to think. I mean, ultimately, my witchcraft is, and I would argue all witchcraft is and should be, at least inherently so, is a goal to inspect our place within an ecology. And I think this is when, like a lot of books, especially now that folk witchcraft or folkloric witchcraft has gotten really popular and brought to the forefront of publishing, and therefore the pop culture media world of witchcraft, right? I think there's this ambiguous statement that so many people try to make and that's the land, we're centering the land, it's a land-based practice. And and then when you step back from that, you have to ask yourself like what, what does that actually mean? And so I think for me and for witchcraft as a whole, it is about developing, re-enchanting, being in tandem with, and understanding your role and your place within your ecology, your environment, your microbiome. So essentially, to sound overly esoteric and sound very complicated, it's about living in your landscape, being a part of that landscape, understanding your role with the community within that landscape, with your immediate landscape.
 Knowing your neighbors, knowing your dead, being present, conjuring spirits, doing magic for magic's sake, I think is a big one too that I like to tell people. Doing magic not because you need to do something, but because you want to do it, or you want to try something to be experimental, to be dangerous. Being careful, of course, but there's something that I like to tell people that I'm, I don't like to say mentoring or teaching because I don't particularly care for those words applied to myself, that I apply to myself. But I tell people a lot of the times, fuck up your life once or twice and then repair it back together. And I think there's a lot of magic and witchcraft within that, certainly. And that again doesn't really answer your question, but I hope that gives a little bit of an idea of a little bit of what I do.

Kim: I love that idea. I love the idea of telling someone to do that, though.

Austin: Mhmm. Well hopefully you don't screw it up too bad, but I think people, you know, we're bound to go through waves of complete, you know, dismantling and dismembering of what we call our safety, what we cleave to, what we are comfortable within, and whether it's due to initiation, whether it's due to life circumstances or whatever, like a lot of the times, you know, nothing is permanent within our lives. And oftentimes many of us are bored by that permanence anyways, even though we're reluctant for the active change to go through it. We're very precarious in that way. But I think we, yeah. Yeah, your safety, and that that sounds even more dangerous or edgelordy than I mean to, but like, your safety means nothing. And so I guess it's better for you to know, to, I guess, yeah, the fuck around is human, to find out is divine meme is really present here.

Kim: I have not seen that but that is a damn delight. (Both laugh) But also if you don't have to be resilient, you don't learn resiliency.

Austin: Yeah, exactly.

Kim: You need to fuck it up. You need to get fucked up to learn how to fix it. 

Austin: Absolutely. 

Kim: And better do it when you're aiming to than when life is just like, hey, I'm going to really beat the hell out of you. 

Austin: Absolutely. Agreed. 

Kim: How has witchcraft changed your life?

Austin: I... Oof, I'm really, really coming out of here. Speaking so boldly is going to really make me sound like the edgelord that I don't want to be. 

Kim: I don't think you... I do not hear  edgelord in anything you've said.

Austin: Oh, well, thank you. You know, I don't think I would necessarily be here if it weren't for witchcraft. And that's not necessarily to say that my experiences are particularly more efficacious or anything like that, or to say that my life is dependent on what I do. But I think very much so, like I had said earlier, there's a coercion into these practices. And I think that if we try to resist, I am a fate-ist and simultaneously somebody who wants to get one up on fate. believe in, in destiny I do believe in, predeterminancy I do believe in, because if you don't then why do you practice divination, right? But I also simultaneously have a feeling that we are chosen to be placed on a path, we are meant to be somewhere, your destiny is unfolding before you, not to be overly poetic about it. But in those statements, I do believe that I was meant to do it and to run from it, to try and avoid it, to try and avoid destiny, to try and separate yourself from that, I think, is a path of somewhat self-destructancy. And therefore, the spirits that have set me on this path then would have simultaneously destroyed me in the process. Again, not to be too fatalist about it, but yeah. So, very important. To answer your question, very important, certainly.

Kim: Now, I don't think I believe in fate, but that would also explain why I don't do divination. Oh, wow. I guess that's my epiphany for this, epiphany number one for this interview. They happen all the time. I'm constantly just... that's why I like it because people make me think about stuff about my own brain. What would you say is the biggest motivator in your practice?

Austin: (laughs) I think that, like I said, the the ways in which I operate, the things that I do, they they are all part of larger motivating factors. The unseen, the things that these spirits have a need for, which is why I'm here, right? I'm a tool, a vessel, if you will indulge me in that for a moment. I think that it's not a sense or a place of worshipping, I think that really defeats the purpose of witchcraft in itself, but I think that in partnering and pacting and swearing with these other spirits, and giving part of yourself up for something else. You therefore are tethered to these spirits, and you therefore must enact what their goals, what their motivations are, and simultaneously your motivations and your goals become part of them as well. And therefore I think my motivations in witchcraft are to... there was for quite a long time, or well I guess I should say that it hasn't gone away, it's just changed in a variety of ways. Community was a really big part of it. There is a level of destruction that is a part of my motivation for witchcraft. Community, destruction, development, and building, and also spreading, or as I have akin to what I do, a web weaving of different connection points. And to frame witchcraft and to get people to see this kind of thing is something that's quite big, much bigger than ourselves, and the development of that. And what, hopefully what our world will look like in this very rapidly changing and very fast-paced world that we're in, in a world that will not look like the world that we know it right now, in the next couple of years. Preparing ourselves for that, gearing up for that, developing that, and where the witch stands as a contemporary figure in all of those things. And so, community being a really big part of it. Yeah. I love a tangent, apparently. (laughs)

Kim: Me too. Yes, this is the most tangential podcast. Always veering. Man, thinking about how different it's going to be, I mean, it's terrifying, but also I'm so ready.

 Austin: Yeah. It's going to be very different, certainly.

Kim: And the destruction part? Oh, that's so exciting. Okay. Do you ever feel like... Do you ever have imposter syndrome? 

Austin: Yeah, certainly, but I think the thing with imposter syndrome, and this is my own experience, so I don't want to speak on how other people feel about it. For me personally, it is something that is very motivated, or is a reflection of like the ego of the self. And that's not me trying to transcend the ego or be different or go into some Jungian pseudo-psychology about the shadow self and integrating the shadow. That's not the place that I'm coming at it from. The ego is important, the self is important. So I'm not in refute of that. But I will say that a lot of the times my feelings on imposter syndrome come from a lack of confidence in something that I'm doing. And so I would encourage, you know, if that's the same way that you're feeling, is wondering, okay, why am I feeling this way? 
Oftentimes it's because I'm comparing myself to something else, or comparing myself to somebody else, and therefore I feel as if I am not valid, or what I am doing is not helping, or what I am doing is not serving a gap somewhere, or I am not doing it as cleanly, neatly, efficaciously as somebody else. And unfortunately I think oftentimes I do that with people who I idealize, and place in a position of authority over myself. And what I think can help mitigate that or remedy that is by remembering that, you know, your importance is also valid. Like the things that you're doing are efficacious. If you're getting results then who cares, you know? There's no point in trying to frame yourself as like the biggest, baddest witch in town because honestly, as long as you're getting the results that you want, then no one can talk shit about what you're doing, if that makes sense.

Kim: That is so interesting, that this conversation is happening to me today. Somebody just told me over the past two days that they like this podcast because I have people on the show and it's... the person who was talking said "Yeah and these are people..." they didn't say idolize, I don't remember, but I mean that's similar to what they said. "I kind of idolize these people and I would be afraid to talk to them or even read their book because I would think they were so far out of my league and I'll never be like that." But that hearing these conversations helps humanize them.

Austin: I love that.

Kim: That made me happy.

Austin: No, I yeah, I think so many people in and we all do this, right? So this is like, I do this.

Kim: Oh, I definitely do.

Austin: Yeah, even to my own self, like there's this like, oh my God, this person's like, so cool, or so smart, or so much, you know, different or better practiced or something like that than I am. And I think what, you know, one of the things that I really have done lately to, again, kind of de-idealize these people, because that's honestly does more detriment to yourself than other people. But what I think can be really helpful to do is to remind yourself that at the end of the day, we all have to go grocery shopping, which is something so banal and so mundane and so stunningly gorgeous that connects us, I think is that at the end of the day, like most likely you have to get food for yourself and whether that's at, you know, a Walmart or a farmer's market or going and foraging it yourself, which, you know, oftentimes most people in our contemporary world, like we still have to go to the grocery store, even if you are a pretty self-sustaining farmer. So at the end of the day, we all have to go grocery shopping. And I think that's, that's really brought some of this back down to earth, some of these people really back down to earth me, which has been really, really nice.

Kim: You are the first person to use the term banal on my podcast and I love you for it.

Austin: Oh, well, thank you.

Kim: I love fancy words. Not that I'm saying you're talking too fancy, I just, it's a delight to hear people use English in a fun way.

Austin: Oh, thank you. No, I love English. I love language. It's so powerful. That's why there are so many, it's such an emphasis on so many books on magic.

Kim:What would you say is your biggest struggle when it comes to your practice?

Austin: I think, you know, for a while it was probably trust in myself. I don't think I have that problem very much anymore. I would say that the biggest fault in me as a human or as a person is that I am deeply critical of myself, and by extension critical of others, but I think that again is a projection. And so I expect to see things almost immediately, and that's not necessarily saying like, I don't expect flames to come out of the tip of my wand or whatever, but that is to say that I sometimes need to be reminded, whether it's through a friend or through a really stern divination, or through, you know, sometimes my spirit reminding me, sometimes gently, sometimes not so kindly that not everything is going to happen overnight and sometimes things that are worth building are worth building slowly. That everything is a process and you know, life is a journey, life is about the journey, not the destination, yada, yada, yada. But very much in the way that Rome wasn't built in a day, and neither will anything that you do always be so instantly gratuitous. So yeah.

Kim: What's something you wish was discussed more in the witch community?

Austin: A lot. I wish right now, which is something that I'm trying to remedy for myself and for so many people I know personally in my own little corner of the internet. Oof, there's so much that I could say and it's all kind of like going back into each other so if it sounds very esoteric and complicated and a little universal, forgive me, but I think that it's important to note that magic is integral, spirit is integral, into every aspect of your life. And I think that we do a disservice to ourself when we try to take the pointy hat off or put the pointy hat on. I think that right now is a great time to philosophize, to theorize, to dream, to write, to discuss, to have conversation with other people. I think it's a good time to study everything that has nothing to do with magic. Everything that is about biology, sciences, arts, the world around you. I think it's a great time to go out and touch grass instead of spending so much time online. Not that online is a bad place, it's a really wonderful place, but I think that now is a good time to recognize that the world that we're in is at a convergence of deeply magical and deeply powerful forces are not on our brink, not some far out concept that we have to reach towards, but the fact that this is happening now in our world. And so the only thing that we can do is to ride with it and make it better for ourselves and prepare for it and find community within others and within ourselves. And I think that, and what does that have to do with Witchcraft Austin? Absolutely nothing and absolutely everything. That we are...

Kim: We all have lives though.

Austin: Certainly.

Kim: We all have lives that we have to live. So I mean, as witches we still have to have life and involve ourselves in the world.

Austin: Absolutely. And so it's very important right now that mutual aid, community aid, knowing your neighbors, reminding ourselves that your internet quote-unquote community, the witchcraft quote-unquote community, is not a community at all. And that's not to be overly pessimistic, that's just a fact. Like, do you know who your neighbors are? Can you name six plants? 

Kim: Yeah, if the internet goes down... 

Austin: Right, exactly, which, I mean, let's face it, that's much closer than you would have expected it to be a year ago. Can you name six plants off the top of your head that are growing in your yard? Are you friendly enough with your neighbors that you can ask for a cup of sugar or some batteries if you really need it, or what happens if you need to be in presence with your neighbors? This isn't like hopefully a doomsday apocalypse thing, that's not what I'm getting at, but very much so, what are our skills? How do we become more reliant on our communities and less reliant on other people and other things to, you know, outside forces to be reliant on, if you catch my drift. Amazon, Walmart, yada yada, corporations.

Kim: It doesn't even have to be doomsday though, I mean, just this past, within seven days, weren't there a bunch of tornadoes that are going to like fuck up some people's towns for at least a couple of days that they have to rely on each other and may not have internet? 

Austin: Absolutely. Yeah. And, unfortunately, a lot of the times disaster is what brings people together, instead of mitigating that disasters are bound to happen, or realizing that disasters are bound to happen. So instead of flailing in the disaster, we mitigate that gap by being in community and outreaching for each other. So like now when disaster strikes, now we have a plan of action, and we can exercise that plan of action and know what to do and go from there and build and regrow and develop. Yeah.

Kim: That sounds great. Let's do that. What brings the most, what brings you the most joy in your practice?

Austin: To be really flat about something, seeing something work. 

Kim: Absolutely. 

Austin: Yeah, seeing something work. To be really obvious about something, but like, you know, it's so amazing to, when you're really, really, really within the craft or in your craft, I should say, within your own spirituality, because mine doesn't look like yours and ours won't look the same and that's okay. But when you're in your spirituality and you can recognize the amazing things that amazing. The reminder of some of the forces that we work with, some of the things that we do, I mean it's just amazing when you are in, you know, in contact with a client when you're doing like divination, like if I'm doing divination with somebody and, you know, I get something that is so random and so strange coming forth from me or from the spirits that I work with. For example, like, oh, I see a can of jasmine tea or something like that, and I don't know why that's important, almost to the point where I won't even mention it so far off and then somebody's like, oh, that was the last thing that my now deceased grandmother gave me before she passed on was this thing of jasmine green tea. And so things like that, just when you're floored in the presence of spirit, when things you see the shimmers of light when the sun beams go through the church windows, or when you're in a place that is dark and you know that everything is around you. I mean, there's just, yeah, there's a lot of power to not even just believing magic, but recognizing that it exists in everything, through everybody, at all stages, all places, all time. It's really powerful.

Kim: Yes. Yes. What is something you did early in your practice that you don't do anymore?

Austin: (laughs) Something that I don't really do is I try not to, which, you know, of course, I'm talking about myself. But I try not to talk about my own practice really obtusely. And that's for a multitude of reasons, a because at this point in the work that I do, it does me almost no benefit to put that up for other people to view and to consume. Simultaneously, there's a lot of backlogging and a lot of backstory that you have to get, a lot of context that's missing. And without being able to, you know, have a, you know, multiple hour-long conversation about like, this is my theory and this is my cosmology and this is who I am and why I believe and do the things that I do and all of these things, and simultaneously giving away my entire practice, I would never be able to fully explain that to somebody. So something that I don't do anymore is I just don't do that. I'd rather talk about the convergence of our practices and what we do. And I like sharing experiences with people in terms of like, oh, did this spirit appear to you this way? Or what is the virtue of mugwort or something like that, or how do you use this plant spirit in a very practical fashion. I absolutely love that as well. But the thing for me is that I don't want to serve my magic, my practice, something that's so deep and personal to me up on a silver platter for people to consume, for the masses to consume. I think that it's something that is personal and is really shaped by your own experience as an individual, and your teachers too, before you, if you have those. So yeah, I don't talk about my practice super obliquely anymore. Which I'm always willing to do, it's not something that I I absolutely like refuse to talk about, it's not that it's just that. I try not to I try to engage with, with the way that we talk about magic a little more holistically.

Kim: That's fair. Plus, I mean the old keep silent. It makes sense.

Austin: Absolutely. Yeah. Because, you know, right. Yeah. There's there's definitely, like I hold a lot of superstitions around speaking on things too soon, or putting things out into the world too early, or telling too many people about your personal life or your your private business or things like that. Yeah. So keeping silent. Because you never know who wishes you ill will. Or even if it's not an intentional thing, like you never know what's going to happen. 

Kim: Yeah, don't say it out loud or you'll jinx it. That. What would you say is your favorite tool in your practice?  It does not have to be a physical object.

Austin: I would say the knife. If I'm not going- well, it kind of ties in. So I think that the blade is like representative of witches very much so. And I think, you know, the witch body is a blade, to be very poetic about it. The witch body is a blade and we mirror our blades, our knives, our sharp objects, the things that cut and poke and stab and bleed and desire and crave to cut things. That's its very nature is to cut and to sever. And how those things operate, you know, the scalpel cuts so it can heal, you know, so it can move in something, so it can remove the skin and the muscle and the tissue, so you can get to the tumor or the blood clot or whatever in this overly masturbatory metaphor. But I think...

Kim: Whatever, I'm here for all this. Wax the hell out of that poeticness.

Austin: Thank you. Thank you very much. I think the blade, the knife is representative of the witch's fire, which is a concept that I haven't gotten into here, but have certainly gotten into it in other places of the witch fire. And it is representative of that. It is that in itself, and it is the directional force of witchcraft itself. And it is representative of the body. Yeah, so the knife. To say a knife, I wouldn't say like an athame or something like that, only because I don't have those in my personal cosmology. Yeah.

Kim: Plus you make them too sometimes, right?

Austin: I do, yeah. I've made some blades before. I have made a couple of bone-handled, like human bone-handled knives. Actually, I don't know when this recording is coming out, but I'm actively in the process of making... 

Kim: June.

Austin: Okay, well, by the time of this recording, they will probably already have been put out into the world that you are listening to this, but I do have some bone-handled wands to go into, to come, to companion, or to be a companion to the bone-handled knives. Although they don't have to be, you know, the same thing. But I think that the knife and the wand hold different places in magic for their use, certainly. But yeah, I'm working in the process of making some bone handled wands. And yes, I have made some bone handled knives and will certainly be making some more at some point.

Kim: I'm a metal worker, so I'm super into making stuff.

Austin: Oh, I love that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Kim: If you could only recommend one book to a new witch, what would it be?

Austin: Oof. If I could only recommend one book to a witch, and who would it be? I would recommend The Silver Bullet by Arthur Evans. A 1975 collection, I believe, by the American Folklore Society. If I'm not mistaken, it is a collection of folklore stories, particularly from the perspective of like Southern American, not South American, but like American South, mostly in Appalachia, witchcraft. Of course it's  a product of its time, but if I were to recommend a book on witchcraft to somebody, it would not be a book about witchcraft at all, because I think that there is more power to folklore and storytelling, and you really kind of have to read between the lines of those things. But I think when you dig into the pages, I mean, it is a book about witch stories, so it certainly isn't like some grand esoteric tome of, like, you really have to search for it. Like, no, I mean, it will definitely tell you how a witch is made and what a witch bullet is and how to make one or how witches make one, right? So you can definitely glean a lot of magic from there, but I think when you really rumiate on the text, it really is a testament to motifs in witchcraft and the power of storytelling. And I think that folklore gives a lot more beautiful credence on how to work magic than, say, a book on witchcraft, Witchcraft 101, you know what I mean? 

Kim: Yeah, I remember Corey Hutcheson referred to that a lot in his book.

Austin: Yeah, Corey. 

Kim: Because I was thinking, that's familiar. That's why. That's where I remember it.

 Austin: Yes. Yeah. Yeah. It's a really good book. Certainly. 

Kim: So we all have high and low periods in life and in our practice. How do you pull yourself out of a low period or magical slump? Or do you feel like you don't have them?

Austin: Yeah, I feel like that's such a like, "Oh, I don't even have those." And that's certainly not what I mean. (both laugh)  I definitely do. I mean, I get tired. I get like this, this past full moon where, we're currently in April for anybody listening, in early April, this past full moon, you know, I don't have the energy, because you know some days at the end of the day all I really want to do is lay on the couch and watch American Dad, because somebody had asked me what my favorite TV was and I was like American Dad. It's very funny and I resonate with Roger. See, it's not all grand esoteric poesis all the time. (both laugh) But I don't necessarily think that I have... I definitely have periods of tiredness. I definitely have periods of not wanting to do something, or missing out on something, or things like that. So I don't want it to appear like I don't have those. But I think that for me and what I do, it's very relational. So it's very much you get out what you put into it, you will experience a lot of the things that you put into the relationships that you create with the spirits of your land, and the other spirit ecologies that you operate within. So that is to say, sometimes it's a matter of, oh I missed out on something, and so therefore that opportunity is gone, and then I don't have anybody else to blame but myself. Sometimes it's "Oh my god I really don't want to do this thing." And then that is part of the sacrifice as all relationships, both the ones that we have, you know, as living people. And those are the same, those should mirror the same spirit relationships that we have, right? So putting in the time, putting in the effort, putting in the energy, sometimes putting in the money, right? You can't always expect your friends to pay for dinner for you. Sometimes you have to pick up the check too. And so, yeah.

Kim: That's a good analogy.

Austin: Oh, thank you. Like, yeah, it really is just putting in work, putting in work and effort and sometimes you can't, and if you can't, then you can't. But you know, then every opportunity that you miss is something that, you know, you can't be mad at a missed opportunity because you're the one who didn't take it,you know, if you know about it. 

Kim: How dare you, how dare you attack me like that? (both laugh)

Austin: I know. Well, I would also feel very attacked too if I said it to myself. (both laugh) As I'm sitting here actively thinking of the things that I'm actively passing, letting myself pass up on. Yeah, yeah. And sometimes you get the opportunity again, and then if you're me, and you know, you miss once in a lifetime astrological events like Jupiter and Saturn conjunction and you don't, you know, do anything for them, and it's like "Oh that really was a once-in-a-lifetime event and I'll never see that again," and yeah. And then you have to sit with that thing.

Kim: Fuck.

Austin: Yeah exactly, it's like "Oh damn, okay."and then you pick yourself up and you move on and you're like well what's the next best thing?

Kim: McDonald's.

Austin: So yeah. McDonald's, absolutely. A 10-piece chicken nugget.

Kim: Exactly! (laughs) Who or what would you say are the three biggest influences on your practice? 

Austin: That's a tough one to answer. You know, with any of the questions you've asked me, I can't just give a clear answer. I think, you know, we're permeable beings, and so we're susceptible to, we're honestly just a byproduct of every experience that we've had. I don't believe that we are these closed up singular entities. We are porous like cells, and we are created by the environment that we're in, the people, the places, the things, the good things, the bad things and all the things in between. So I would say that art is probably really important, but also every experience that I've ever had. I couldn't say that I would change any of it. No regerts. (both laugh) Because you know I wouldn't be who I am today without them. So yeah, thanks to culture. Thanks I guess, not much thanks, but thanks to the crippling Capitalistic hellscape that I live in. Thanks to the haters, y'all are real ones. (both laugh) Thanks to the friends and family and the spirits, especially, along the way. Yeah, yeah, all of these things are so important. Like I said earlier in the podcast, magic, witchcraft, all of it is inseparable from art, culture, dance, food, music, architecture, the ground beneath you, policy, sciences, etc. etc. All of these things are interwoven, and I think that when we start to recognize those things, that is when things get truly very interesting and very magical.

Kim: Do you have advice for new practitioners?

Austin: Oh yeah, lots of advice. That sounded really shady, that's not how I meant it to be. (both laugh) My first advice would be don't try and monetize your craft, at least not for a while. Actually learn something before you decide to sell something. Get a teacher. That will be a lot cooler. Even if they're shitty, sometimes. Honestly you will learn so much from other people than you will just learn by yourself. Like I said, we're all permeable beings. Fuck your life up once or twice and then put it back together. The biggest piece of advice is that. Read everything. Consume everything. Not even read, but consume as much as you can. Not in a greedy way, but recognize that Sex in the City can teach you just as much about witchcraft as the Grimorium Verum. Take everything as something that can be applied theoretically to magic and witchcraft. Consume yourself with media, with art, with music, with dance, with food. Involve yourself in community, involve yourself with people, listen to people, take a stance on something, don't be ambivalent. Yeah, all of those things.

Kim: That was so good.

Austin: Thank you.

Kim: I can't even speak right now. Holy crap. I tried to think what Sex and the City would have taught me and I had cut I came up with stuff, so. Ask for what you want. Or what you don't want.

Austin: Yeah, absolutely

Kim: I'm thinking of Miranda and the, Miranda and the rimming thing with that guy. That's what I was thinking. 

Austin: Oh yeah, yeah yeah.

Kim: Just say "I don't want to do that." Who do you think would be fun to have on the show to answer these questions, even the weird Patreon ones?

Kim: Just say "I don't want to do that." Who do you think would be fun to have on the show to answer these questions, even the weird Patreon ones?

Austin: Porous Palms. His name's David, David Davis. Such a sweetheart, an amazing person, really gorgeous and intelligent, really doing some hotgirl shit right now. David if you're listening to this shoutout to you. Yeah, David Davis is great. 

Kim: Cool. Is there anything I didn't ask you that you wanted to talk about, like promote yourself?

Austin: No, I think we cleared all of it, I think that was great. I will say, I am doing, I will be giving a lecture called Supping Hellbroth In the Devil's Garden, which will all be about potioncraft at the Salem Summer Symposium,  or the Salem Witchcraft and Folklore Festival. And there are so many amazing people who are there, some friends, some colleagues, some peers. Amazing people who do that festival in August. At the time of this I don't know if it will be out, but I have a lecture coming out titled "Cast Me Cruel With Heart of Thorn," which is all about initiatory witchcraft practices in folklore and literature specifically in America. What else? You can check out all of my very spirit-led wares including oils, incences, potions, effigies, talismans, handmade jewelry, handcast pendants, stuff like that. I do everything! (laughs) All at banexbramble.com. Of course you can catch the podcast, Southern Bramble, A Podcast of Crooked Ways with Marshall and I, and I think, I think I think, that was everything, to be overly self-promotive. But yeah, thank you for asking!

Kim: I'm impressed at how many things you make. I love seeing all the different things. I'm like, holy shit, look at all this cool stuff he's doing now. 

Austin: Thank you, I appreciate that. Thank you. 

Kim: So the two last things that I ask- you are very welcome. The two last things that I ask of people, of guests, are, the first thing is would you please recommend something, anything at all, doesn't have to be witch related at all. Just recommend something to the listeners. 

Austin: Recommend something. Anything?

Kim: Mhmmm.

Austin: Oof, that's so tough. You know what? I would recommend, at least right now, at the time of this recording, a YouTube video, or it's a lecture, by a woman named Rosie Braidotti, that's R-O-S-I, braid like braiding hair, Otti like O-T-T-I, Rosie Braidotti, her lecture for I believe it's Yale, but I'm not sure, it's called Necropolitics and the Ways of Dying. Rosie Braidotti is a post-humanist, she coined the term post-humanism, philosopher under the school of... God, now I can't remember his name. Under a very famous French philosopher who, if I can think of it in just a moment, I will get it to you. It's not Nietzsche, even though that's who I want to say. It's certainly not Nietzsche, because none of us need any more Nietzsche in our life because... I'm clearly stalling. (both laugh) Because nihilism is, in my opinion, the offensiveness to the individual spirit, or to the community spirit. Can't think of him right off the top of my head. I am very sorry, but he was a very famous hermeticist and French philosopher. And yeah, that's what I would recommend. Rosie Braidotti's lecture, Necropolitics and Ways of Dying. It's very good if you are interested in philosophy and theory and reminding ourselves that the term human has always been a very pointed term, and is one that is wrapped up in a lot of politics. 

Kim: The last thing is, please tell me a story. About anything at all, it can be, I do love stories from people's lives where they're like, "One time I did this bat shit crazy thing with my cousins and we almost exploded a car." 

Austin: Yeah... 

Kim: Or it can be if you are more comfortable sharing things that are not about your life and involve folk, folk, folktales, that's fun, too.

Austin:  Oh, yeah, absolutely. OK, so I can't conjure up a story off the top of my head because there's far too many, and far too many ones that are awful. I will tell you the story of Jonas Dotson, which is going to be a really important figure in my initiatory traditions, or not even traditions, but witchcraft initiations specifically in America. And this comes from the Silver Bullet, and I'm not going to read the actual text because that would it takes about 15 minutes it's like a 15 minute long story but essentially there is a man named Jonas Dotson and he is the son of a preacher and Jonas is bored, and hates his father who is a preacher, so he decides that out of spite he is going to learn how to become a witch. And so Jonas goes to seek the help of a woman who off the top of my head, I can't remember her name, but she lives out in, up on a mountain somewhere in the middle of winter. So he decides that he's going to go visit this woman and he asks her, Ma, how can I be a witch?
 And she tells him, so the first thing that you need to do is you need to steal a ram from your dad's farm. And so he goes and he does this. And then she says you need to go to church then and you need to steal a plate, a collection plate. And it has to be a pewter collection plate, so he does this. Then the next thing that he has to do is find some grease and put it on the plate, so he does this. And then he has to find a river that is directly flowing east, and so he does this. So for nine mornings, every morning for nine days, he has to wake up before sunrise and go to the river and he has to say this charm which is "As I dip this water in this ram's horn, cast me cruel with heart of thorn," which is where the name of the lecture comes from. Or "As I dip this water with this ram's horn, cast me cruel with heart of thorn, and to the devil I do lease, as this plate is free of grease, so too shall my soul of Christian grace be free. And effin' I come, an evil crone, from outer skin to inner bone. May I never give any Christian peace." 
And so he does this for nine days, and then the devil is supposed to come to him and make him a witch and at his front doorstep he will find a toad familiar. But he does this and the toad does not appear. And so he goes and he asks the woman who has told him to do this, "Hey why didn't this happen?" And she said, "Well the devil doesn't trust you because you're the son of a preacher, so you have to do it again. And likely I reckon he would make you do it a couple of more times." And so Jonas Dotson spent 22 years of his life trying to perform this ritual. And eventually he did perform the ritual and he became a very famous conjuror and a very famous witch for being very evil and very awful, I believe, until he got convicted of murder and was hung or sent to death. I don't remember. But yeah, it's not a necessarily pleasant story. But yes, that is the story that I can think of. 

Kim: It is a good story.

Austin: Thank you.

Kim: Man... okay, that's, yes, that's fun.

Austin: Yes, and so for the lecture, we're going to be like inspecting that, especially inspecting the chant because that's one of my favorite things. Even like the stanza, the structure of the poetry is very interesting to me. So yeah, it's going to be really exciting and I hope- and you know it's not just going to be a class on theory, it's also going to be discussing, you know, "Let's take some of these elements of folklore, and then how do we apply them to actually creating a initiatory ritual, and what does that look like, and what is that going to mean for us?" and you know cautions and and things like that. 

Kim: That sounds really cool. 

Austin: Thank you.

Kim: Well, thank you for being on the show and telling so many stories. 

Austin: Yes, thank you for having me. It's been so much fun. I'm so excited that we were finally able to do it.

Kim: Me too. And I will see you on Instagram, and thanks again. Bye. 

Austin: See you, thank you.

Kim: So Austin, welcome to Patreon.

Austin: Hi, hi Patreon. (fades out)

Austin: (fades in) The initiation happened, and you know, it's conjuring the witch initiatory spirit and swearing yourself to it and yada yada yada. And after that was done, it was very, very close to dark. And it was like the blue hour. And I could hear- where I live, there's a lot of coyotes. And I could hear the coyotes starting to like howl, after the initiation was done in this like riotous like... (fades out)

Kim: To hear more of the Patreon episode, head over to patreon.com/cleverkimscurios for a free seven-day trial. The Monthly Magic Tier will give you access to the Monthly Magic Marco Polo Group, the private Patreon Facebook group, access to the written monthly spells, and more. There are also tiers with just digital content, or you can get spell boxes, intentional handcrafted jewelry that I make especially for witches, and there's even a special crystal tier. Check it out at patreon.com/cleverkimscurios. Thanks for listening to this episode of Your Average Witch. You can find us all around the internet, on Instagram at YourAverageWitchPodcast, Facebook at Facebook.com/YourAverageWitchPodcast, at YourAverageWitch.com, and at your favorite podcast service. Want to help the podcast grow? Leave a review! You can review us on Amazon and Apple Podcasts, and now you can rate us on Spotify. You just might hear your review read at the end of an episode. To rate Your Average Witch on Spotify, click the home key, click Your Average Witch Podcast, and then leave a rating. If you'd like to recommend someone for the podcast, like to be on it yourself, or if you'd like to advertise on the podcast, send an email to youraveragewitchpodcast at gmail.com. Thanks for listening, and I'll see you next Tuesday.