Episode Ninety-Eight: The Interview-Cory Thomas Hutchison

Hello everyone,

And welcome to episode 98 of Bite-Sized Blessings.

It's December and I've been a little erratic with the release of the podcast.

And I'm taking a little time trying to relax,

Trying to enjoy the season.

I'm doing some traveling.

And so for the month of December,

The podcasts are going to come out a little bit willy nilly.

And so for those of you who have been counting on them on Sundays,

I do apologize,

But I've got some great guests coming up,

I think for episode 100,

I'm going to have a dear friend interview me because I do have some stories to tell.

And so,

Yes,

We're so very close to 100.

So very close.

However,

We're here to talk about episode 98,

This episode right here.

And in this episode,

I get to interview Corey Thomas Hutchinson.

And so I found Corey because I was at my favorite,

Favorite bookstore here in Santa Fe,

Found his best-selling book,

New World Witchery,

A Trove of North American Folk Magic.

Corey is a fascinating human being.

He's a folklorist who studies folk belief,

Folk magic,

Holidays,

Festivals,

Play,

And games among many other topics.

He's also written and published extensively,

Including that aforementioned amazing book,

But he's had articles published in Midwestern Folklore,

The Journal of Contemporary Legends,

And Children's Folklore Review.

He's also written for many other non-academic outlets.

He's taught courses in writing and composition at Penn State Harrisburg and Kutztown University,

As well as classes in folklore,

Popular culture,

American studies,

And speech communication.

And he received his doctorate from Penn State in 2018 for his dissertation work on the Philadelphia Parade of Spirits.

He has so much going on,

Including,

Including,

If you can believe it,

He's the co-host of a podcast,

New World Witchery,

Which explores North American folk magical traditions.

And so what I really appreciate about his book,

His book really goes into the history,

The folklore,

The enchanting intelligence of local communities,

As far as magic,

Popular belief stories,

And magical workings,

Magical places in the United States.

It's a nonfiction,

It's very informative,

And it's very historical.

So I urge everyone listening to the podcast,

If you are interested in a deep dive into the history,

Into the stories of North American magic,

Check his book out.

So now without further ado,

Episode 98 of Bite-Sized Blessings.

I was going to go out there and kind of prepare this sort of like fire and the space,

Get the fire ready to light and everything and prepare the space.

And I was going to go do all that.

And my partner was going to wave the edge of the forest.

And I was going to come back and get her.

And I was like,

This will take me like 10 minutes to get there,

Put the stuff together,

Come back.

Well,

I went in there and did the things and took me a little longer than I was expecting to,

But there's definitely like this different pressure in the air.

It just felt a little different.

There'd be little ripples of wind and things like that.

And very weird.

And so then I came back out and she was like,

Where were you?

Like,

What?

I've been gone like 15 minutes.

I'm sorry.

It was a little longer.

It's been three hours and we had lost,

I had lost all the time in there.

Is it fair to say I'm like 90% coffee,

10% coffee?

10% pixie dust.

I mean,

That feels pretty good.

Um,

Like that's kind of how I run.

Um,

Yeah,

I don't know.

I mean,

I think it's,

It's really easy to default into what we do as,

As a way of describing who we are and I don't know that that's fair,

I think,

I think,

I think maybe rather than saying what we do in terms of like a job,

Because that does tell you something about me,

But.

You know,

The only thing I've been able to really articulate about myself,

Um,

As a person,

I think is that I do have a sense of person,

A purpose or a mission.

And that is,

I'm somebody who really wants to see the world re-enchanted.

Um,

Somebody who really wants to see the world believe a little more in magic.

And that doesn't mean discarding science.

That doesn't mean discarding other things that are valuable to you,

But to believe in that 10% pixie dust,

To believe that there is magic available to us in this world,

Um,

However we interpret that,

Because I think that's part of what the human experience is about is,

Is under,

Is going beyond just sort of nature,

Red and tooth and claw and sort of the natural world,

Which is a wonderful thing.

And saying,

Even,

Even with all of the sadness,

Even with all the,

The negative things that can happen,

There is still wonder to be found and to be expressed.

So that's really where I would kind of start from.

I probably wouldn't say that if somebody were asking me that at a party,

I probably would do the whole like,

Well,

I do this and I do this and I do this,

But you know,

Even my druthers,

I would certainly put that on a business card and be like,

Here for wonder,

Boom,

There we go.

So here for the magic.

That's amazing.

Um,

I love that.

Um,

I did see,

And this is the part that I am really,

I'm enchanted by is that you,

You have studied and I don't know,

Do you teach,

Um,

Folk tales and,

And I guess,

Let's start with how did you come to be interested in that?

Was it a childhood kind of passion?

Um,

Yes,

It definitely was a childhood passion to an extent.

I was,

I mean,

I was definitely the,

Um,

The bookworm kid,

Uh,

Spent a lot of time in the library.

There's a book series called encyclopedia Brown,

Where they talk about this kid who you would solve mysteries is one of those kids mystery series,

But they talked about like,

He would sleep with a bookmark in his mouth so they can remember where he was.

And I'm like,

Oh,

That's me.

That's also,

That's a self-identification.

That's me.

It came with a bookmark in his mouth for sure.

Uh,

And so that was,

I was always very curious,

But I was also always very curious about the kind of the weird stuff.

Um,

Like I watched a lot of the old universal monster movies as a kid.

So Wolfman was one of my favorites.

Um,

I watched Dracula.

I watched the car,

The Karloff Frankenstein.

Um,

The creature from the back black lagoon was big when I loved that one.

Um,

And so I would watch all these films and in my,

Um,

Kind of middle school library,

They had this collection of these little board books that basically were sort of like,

They were the story of the films,

But then a bunch of trivia and stuff like that kind of around the films from the universal monster franchise.

And I remember bumping into one of those about the Wolfman and in it,

They happen to have one of these medieval grimoire spells that they had,

You know,

Put in there that was all about how do you get a wolf skin belt and you go out and dance around a bonfire under a full moon.

Um,

And you,

I think it was sort of like you pledge yourself to the devil or something,

There was all sorts of like,

But this whole thing was sort of like,

And then you can become a werewolf.

And I was like,

You can do what now?

How does that,

Where do I find the wolf skin?

Um,

Where,

How can I get a bonfire?

Like,

It was a very like,

Oh,

This is wonderful.

And like,

I would find these books of like old Proverbs and folk sayings.

I remember finding one that had the see a pin and pick it up all the day.

You have good luck,

Which I had only heard as see a penny,

Pick it up up to that point.

And I was like,

Oh,

There's different versions of this.

And so even from that very young age,

I was looking for all these kind of weird quirky corners of our world and our existence.

And that was really important to me.

And then,

You know,

You grow up,

You kind of maintain some of that,

You lose some of that through those teenage years and through young adulthood.

And then I happened to,

Um,

Move overseas to,

Uh,

To Prague.

Um,

I was teaching English in Prague for about a year.

Um,

In the apartment where my wife and I were living,

Um,

There was this big beautiful kind of cherry tree that grew where we could reach out the window and just grab cherries by the handful.

We were wanting to eat cherries.

It was beautiful.

And then like,

You'd wander through the town and things,

There are literally.

Hundreds,

If not thousands of years old.

I remember standing in the thousand year old bathtub of the goddess who founded Prague at one point.

Um,

And just being like,

This is amazing.

Um,

We would see,

You know,

We would see these creatures that were,

You know,

Clearly like Irish wolf hounds or something like that,

But there was just something about where they were in the setting of it.

I was like,

Those are,

Those are like storybook wolves.

Those are storybook creatures of some kind.

We,

We would sort of make up names for them.

We had a friend who was living with us there at the time,

And we would go vampire hunting at night just to kind of like,

Oh,

You know,

Go down the city streets and stuff.

So it was a very enchanting time.

And I left that and I came back here to the United States and I was like,

Wow,

That was great.

It was really wonderful to live in a place where there was a lot of magic.

And I kind of paused for a second.

I was like,

I live in the South.

We have a lot of folk tales.

We have a lot of this folklore stuff.

Maybe there's more magic here than I'm giving it credit for.

And that's when I started kind of unpacking that.

And that led me on a whole journey to do master's degree,

A PhD,

Trying to find this folklore,

Trying to find this folklore of magic and enchantment,

Particularly from North America,

Because that was what I felt I couldn't find anywhere else at the time.

And I really,

Really wanted to see that flourish and bloom and be a part of the sort of like,

Hey,

Guys,

Everybody come over here.

Let's look at look at this thing.

This is amazing.

And so that's really been kind of my journey for that.

I was Catholic.

My father was kind of atheist at one point and then went pretty firmly Protestant later on.

And they divorced when I was around one year,

One year old.

So I really had kind of two different faith tracks available to me throughout most of my childhood.

I never got fully confirmed as a Catholic.

I never got baptized as a Protestant or a Catholic.

But I was very much kind of I soaked in a lot of the Catholic teaching and the Catholic culture because I would do the classes and I would do,

You know,

You know,

All the kind of background stuff.

It's just one of the things where you kind of get up to the line.

They're like,

Now,

Are you going to put on the white thing?

Then go,

You know,

Get the priesthood.

And I was like,

Not today.

No,

Not today.

So that was just not a thing.

I wouldn't want it to go down that road.

But I really loved I love the smells in the air.

I love the smells and bells aspect of it.

I loved the incense and I loved the sort of in intoned chanting sounds that you get in Catholic church.

There were some cool things about Catholicism.

There's also a lot of not cool things about Catholicism at times,

Too.

I think you're going to find that with a lot of religions.

So I'm not,

Not blaming Catholicism for having problems.

If it's made by people,

It's got problems.

It's just how life is.

And then the Protestant side of things,

You know,

I grew up doing,

Doing,

You know,

Kind of occasional,

You know,

Going when I was at my dad's for the weekend,

We would go to Presbyterian mostly is what we were going to.

All the Methodists crept in there,

Too.

So I kind of got used to the idea of like,

You know,

Eldership leaders.

And,

You know,

He was the choir director.

He was a music person.

He was a music professor,

Actually.

And he would,

You know,

Lead the choir and it was fine.

But I never really felt connected to a lot of that story and a lot of that mythology.

And particularly,

I remember I went very early in my life.

I went very hard at it when I was sort of an adolescent.

And I was like,

Well,

You know,

I'm just going to read the Bible cover to cover.

And I did it.

Then I read it again,

Cover to cover.

And I was like,

OK,

I still feel like I'm not getting it.

So I talked to my dad and he said,

Well,

Just read these parts right here.

You can skip numbers.

Numbers is really boring.

And I was like,

OK,

Fine.

So I would like do the kind of like highlights and stuff like that.

And at the end of it,

I felt like I had a pretty good grip on conceptually some stuff in the Bible.

And I could point to some things and say,

Like,

OK,

This is interesting.

And I had a little crisis of faith at that point where I'm like,

Well,

Now that I actually believe any of this and a lot of that centered around the fact that.

There's there at the time,

This is the early 90s,

There was a very strong Christian pushback against the LGBTQ side of things.

And for me,

At that point in time,

When I had LGBTQ friends,

I had queer friends that I,

You know,

Very much was like,

There's no way they're going to hell.

They're way better than me.

So they're doing better things than I'm doing by a long shot.

And then like another point kind of within that,

I started to go,

Wait a second.

I think I'm also I'm also queer in the sense that I'm bisexual.

I was like,

You know,

I'm kind of equally drawn.

And so what does that mean for me?

And so once that kind of started to all processes like this,

I don't think I can be a part of this community when this community doesn't want to be.

It doesn't want me to be a part of it.

So I kind of went to this ambivalent period,

Found Wicca and kind of eclectic Wicca and experimented with that.

Didn't jive with everything.

It's fine.

It was good baseline,

But yeah,

I just didn't go there.

And I still remember,

I remember this moment when,

So my mom,

My mom died when I was 16.

And then my,

She died of cancer.

And then the Christmas before she died of cancer,

She died in February.

And so the December before she died,

My dad told us that he had cancer.

So I was like,

I'm going to die.

Told us that he had cancer.

So,

So it was a really,

That was not a great year.

But,

You know,

While he was sick,

You know,

I'd never got the chance to talk to my mom about a lot of this stuff.

And I remember being like,

You know what?

I know I'm not Christian.

I know I believe in this kind of more Wiccan-y type of thing.

I need to talk to my dad about this.

I need to let him know.

And so I left him a note one morning saying,

Dad,

We need to talk.

And now as a parent,

I'm like,

Oh no,

That was not the note to leave.

We don't,

That's a scary note.

Because when I got home,

Dad like came and sat me down.

He's like,

Okay,

What's,

What's going on?

And I said,

Dad,

I think I'm a Wiccan.

And he went,

Oh,

Thank God.

I thought you were on drugs.

From there,

It was,

It was lovely.

I mean,

It was,

You know,

He asked some questions.

He's like,

I kind of get this.

I was into certain aspects of like,

He had the Zohar on his bookshelf and like,

Had,

You know,

Read some of these like 19th century,

He's a big fan of Robert Pierce's Descendants of the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.

It was like,

Yeah,

Experimental spirituality.

I get it.

This is the age,

It's fine.

So he treated it a little bit like a phase,

But it didn't bother him.

So,

But it was really funny.

He was like,

I'm just glad you're not on drugs.

Just stay away from the drugs.

There's a lot,

There's been a lot of kind of magical moments in my life.

I'll tell you like one of the ones that really stuck with me and it,

It,

I don't even know where to categorize it,

But it was very profound for me.

I mentioned that my mom had passed away.

And,

You know,

Several years later,

After I'd been to Prague and kind of moved back and everything,

I was kind of coming back to this,

You know,

Sort of folk magical approach to things.

And some of that involves kind of making contact with ancestors.

There's a lot of ancestral work and things like that.

And so I'd set up a little ancestor altar.

He'd had her old writing desk and that was in our living room.

And I put up a little candle for her and a little statue of Mary that she liked.

And I had a little bit of dirt from her grave as well,

But I just kind of kept there on the shelf.

And I just kind of established this whole thing and put it there and just sort of said,

Well,

Okay,

Mom,

You've got a home within my home.

You're here if you want to be here.

And it was either that night or within like two or three nights,

I was falling asleep.

And the,

The living room,

There was like,

There's like a,

The living room and then there's a long hallway and then there's the bedroom where I sleep.

And I was laying down and normally the bedroom door is closed.

In fact,

It was closed even that night.

And I was in this kind of like,

You know,

The hypnagogic state,

That sort of medium state between sleep and awake.

And I also got this really strong impression.

There was something down the hall.

There's something down the hall and around the corner.

And so I kind of half opened my eyes and the door was open and I felt the impression of something kind of coming down the hall toward me.

And it wasn't,

I mean,

There's,

This is the beginning of a horror film as much as it's anything,

But it wasn't that,

It wasn't that feeling.

It was this feeling of like,

Something's coming in here,

But it's very familiar.

Very familiar.

And I was kind of laying there and all of a sudden I felt my hair moving on my forehead being brushed aside.

And I knew instantly I could smell,

I could feel the texture of fingertips and I knew it was my mom.

And she was there for that moment.

And it was this reconnection,

You know,

Almost 10 years after she passed where I was like,

Oh,

You,

That really worked out.

You're really here.

I'm going to do what I can to make sure that you're comfortable and that,

You know,

You can be in this home where now you have grandchildren that you didn't get to meet in life,

But gosh,

You have a chance to kind of be around them now.

And it was a very profound experience and it made me very aware of like how important this relationship is with the spiritual world,

But also,

You know,

With the people that we have in this life too are in this sort of like,

Let's cultivate these connections so that we do have memories,

So that we can leave memories behind that can be our placeholders.

That can be the bookmark,

Right?

The bookmark in our mouth.

They can hold our place in the world.

And I should say,

Like,

I'd had dreams.

If you've ever lost somebody close to you,

You have dreams sometimes where they'll show back up.

And I remember having one where,

You know,

I was back in the house where I had grown up with her and she was just in another room and I went in the saw her and I was like,

Oh mom,

I thought you were dead.

And she said,

No,

No,

I just had to go away for a while,

But I'm back now.

And then we had a long conversation.

It was really beautiful.

And then I woke up and for this first 10,

15 seconds,

I was like,

Oh,

Good,

She's alive.

Everything's fine.

And then you lose them all over again.

And that's a very painful grieving process thing that happens.

But this experience with her coming into the room after setting up the ancestor space made me realize,

Oh,

That dream conversation still has value.

There's still,

It was still a chance to talk to her.

It was still a chance to sit and be with her in that moment.

And so it's made me value those moments where even if I am in a dream with her,

And even if I have to go through that loss again,

It still feels like communion with her.

And that is a powerful thing for me.

So that definitely has had a lasting impact on me.

And I would call that something magical for sure.

Definitely an enchanted moment.

Wow.

You know,

I have had people who have passed and I've had those dreams that you're talking about.

And it's so comforting to see them again inside the dream.

It's such a reunion.

I mean,

The feeling is so beautiful and blissful to see them again,

Reconnect,

You know,

Have a conversation or just be in their presence or kind of just have them tell you that they're okay.

You know,

That they're okay.

And you're going to be okay.

I mean,

Those are my experiences,

But it's really beautiful.

You know,

I have talked before in this podcast about that kind of liminal space in between being asleep and being awake.

Yeah.

You're like half aware.

It's this kind of this twilight that you're inhabiting.

And it's so powerful and in such a place of magic,

I found where so many delicious things can happen.

And I just love that your experience,

You know,

Happens in that state,

Because I don't know if everybody experiences that state between being awake and being asleep.

I don't know if everybody experiences it so profoundly as you and I have,

But it is,

I do hope I do wish that state at least once for everybody's life,

Because it's it is this place of magic that's so beautiful and powerful.

So it's kind of exciting that you've experienced it.

I,

It's beautiful.

It's a wonderful space to be in.

I know.

Definite magic.

It's funny,

Like,

I really think like,

You know,

In the study of,

You know,

The sort of folklore and folk magic,

It is funny how often folk spells will depend upon you doing something kind of to your bed or in your bed,

So that you can have a dream that gives you something gives you information gives you a connection.

It's very,

You know,

There's absolutely this sort of sense like your,

Your relationship between the sleep and the waking world is bridged by that space,

That bed space.

And that is a magical space.

It is its own liminal space.

So I really like your kind of framing of that.

Gosh,

I did not,

I was not aware of that,

That,

That so many folk spells dealt with that space.

And that's actually fascinating.

Yeah,

There's,

There's one where like you put,

If you go to a wedding,

You can take a piece of wedding cake,

I would assume you would wrap it up really well and stick it under your pillow and you'll dream of like a future spouse or future lover,

Right?

Definitely wrap it because unless you really want to do the sheets the next day,

It's going to get messy.

So there's all kinds of stuff like that,

Or like,

You know,

Putting a Bible verse under your pillow,

And that kind of can bring visions of somebody that you're going to be with.

You know,

Even beyond the kind of dreaming component of it,

Like the child birthing bed used to be,

You know,

I think you'd have your child birth in the bed,

And they put sharp objects underneath the bed so that we cut the pain of the childbirth.

So there's definitely a sense of like,

The bed is magical.

If you've ever seen the old movie Bed,

Knobs and Broomsticks,

The bed is always very magical.

You just,

You just have to know how to enchant.

There's lots of stories like little magics and stuff like that.

Like I've seen a browker do a healing,

A browker,

So for those who don't know,

A browker is a Pennsylvania German folk healer,

And they have different terms.

So there's one charm,

It's called a blood stopping charm.

And,

You know,

It's not like if your arms cut off or like you got your leg caught in the thresher levels of bleeding,

But like if you've,

You know,

Given yourself a good cut,

They can do this charm over you.

And it's fascinating because I've seen it work where,

You know,

The wound is bleeding and it will just stop bleeding and then not heal,

But it'll sort of like contract a little bit and it stops,

Stops,

You know,

Being a thing and they can treat it then at that point.

And that's a fascinating thing to see magic kind of work in action.

Now,

They're probably,

You could probably point to biological chemical processes that run into that.

And I wouldn't for a second say,

No,

Those aren't true.

But the fact that there's a magical moment there and that there is something that seems to happen between the person doing the healing and the actual healing act,

It's powerful.

And they would always in the brokers,

I should say,

Are always going to say like that power comes from not them,

But they're sort of channeling it from the divine and things like that.

So I've seen things like that,

You know,

I've worked little spells in my life that I've always been sort of surprised by.

I remember one of the first spells I worked was the spell where you basically put a silver coin in the bottom of a bowl of water and catch the full moon's reflection on it and then wash your hands in that,

Right.

And it's supposed to bring you money.

And I remember like I did that and I was like,

Ah,

This is,

I'm just going to see what happens like,

You know,

You know what goes on here.

And then literally within the next month,

I got like a $600 check that I wasn't expecting.

And I was like,

What,

How did,

What,

Like,

How'd that even happen?

And it was like,

This is amazing.

And at that point,

I'm like,

Let's do more of this magic stuff.

But part of the thing that I learned from that was like,

There's,

There's definitely kind of a beginner's luck component to some of your early magic that you do.

And after that,

It expects you to do some work because I've tried to do workings where like,

I was sort of like,

Let's just,

You know,

Try to do this thing off the cuff really quickly.

And I didn't do a lot of maintenance with it didn't put effort into it.

Those don't work out.

Those usually are,

They'll fizzle or fail in some spectacularly weird way.

And so that taught me like,

Oh,

If you're going to do,

You know,

A candle working,

You need to stick with it,

Right?

You got to stick with that for them all in the multiple days that you're going to work with it.

And maybe that's just kind of training your mind to expect that the wonder or to put some wonder out there from yourself.

I don't know.

But if you do put in the effort,

I have noticed there does seem to be a return on that,

Which is nice.

So yeah,

Lots of little miracles,

Little magical moments.

Just kind of,

You know,

These elements of wonder.

I remember one.

Okay,

This is going to be totally this is a wild story.

And people who've heard my podcast are going to know that story.

But I've got to share,

I got to share it as I hope it's okay.

It's a little long,

Not super long,

It's a little long.

So my podcast partner and I,

We sometimes will do workings together,

Rituals and magic and workings together.

And there was one time we had found this old stone chimney in the middle of the woods from a house.

It was an old house that had basically been not torn down.

It just collapsed every time it had a well,

Like if you weren't careful,

You could fall into the well.

And there was a stone chimney and there were four corner blocks and some pieces of the walls.

But that was it.

That was all that was left of it.

We're like,

Well,

This seems very witchy.

Let's do magic here.

And so we would go out there and work.

But the problem is,

It was kind of like there wasn't a path to it.

You really kind of were trailblazing yourself out there through a bunch of beautiful periwinkle all that was carpeting the forest floor.

There's probably poison ivy in there and stuff,

Too.

But we were trying to avoid that gorgeous,

You know,

But definitely wild animals and things like that that lived out there.

And so there was some risk involved in going out there.

Well,

We went one time.

I was going to go out there and kind of prepare this sort of like fire in the space,

Get the fire ready to light and everything and prepare the space.

And I was going to go do all that.

And my partner is going to wait the edge of the forest and I was going to come back and get her.

It's taking like 10 minutes to get there,

Put the stuff together,

Come back.

Well,

I went in there and did the things and took me a little longer than I was expecting to.

But there's definitely like this different pressure in the air.

It just felt a little different.

There'd be little ripples of wind and things like that and very weird.

And so then I came back out and she was like,

Where were you like?

What had been gone like 15 minutes?

I'm sorry.

It was a little longer.

So it's been three hours and we had lost.

I had lost all the time in there just from this weird kind of fairy liminal space.

And then so we decided,

OK,

Let's go in.

Let's go ahead and go to this thing,

Get this done.

Well,

We get in there and suddenly we get lost because,

Again,

No clear cut path.

We're looking around.

We're looking around.

Like,

How do we get back to this space?

And we couldn't figure out how to get there.

And so finally we're like,

OK,

Let's shut off the flashlight and ask for some guidance.

Let's see if we can call on some spirits to bring us some guidance.

And we're in the middle of this kind of stand of periwinkle woods all around us.

We were there.

We showed the light where the lights off for maybe two,

Three minutes as we're kind of doing this little like under our breath,

Chanting,

Asking for guidance and help to find the stone houses,

What we're calling it,

The stone house for this.

And so,

OK,

Let's turn the light back on.

We click the light back on and there is an animal about three and a half,

Four feet tall,

Standing maybe five feet away from us.

And first I'm like,

It's a coyote.

And I jump in front of my partner and start like making this crazy noise.

It's like trying to scare it off.

And that's when we kind of both process.

Oh,

No,

This is a deer.

There's a it's a small deer.

And the fact that this thing did not immediately run away when I did that is shocking enough.

But then it kind of looked at us,

Turn around and started walking and we followed it.

And it led us right to the stone house where we were supposed to go to our ritual and our working.

And then as soon as we got there,

Just kind of walked away off into the woods.

And that was it.

And we were like.

What?

What?

We just led by like a spirit deer to the space.

Like that was the most literal like we need a guide.

Oh,

You got.

And the fact that the deer kind of looked just like we were idiots when we turned the light back on.

Like you asked me to be here.

Why are you acting like a total fool and yelling at me?

I don't get paid enough for this.

And it's often the rituals like amazing moment,

Amazing moment.

Will live with me until the end of my days.

Love that moment.

How do you interpret or kind of extrapolate or you know,

There's this notion,

Of course,

In every religion,

Quote unquote,

I feel like the OG that we know about is Zoroastrianism,

But it's like the light in the dark,

That basic idea of good versus evil or whatever,

The dark,

The black,

Which is such a there's a lot that can be found in the dark that is very valuable and amazing in your work.

In what you've been doing,

Do you have do you have any belief system around what the darkness is comprised of or if it even exists or how it manifests in the world?

I know that's a big question.

That is a big question.

And it's a fair question.

I mean,

One of the things I talk about in the book is that you cannot tell the story of North American folk magic without also bringing up the devil,

Quote unquote,

Right?

Because he factors into so many of the folk tales,

He factors into so many of the legends and things like that.

And it's really important to remember that the quote unquote devil that you find in these folk tales is oftentimes not the same that you would find in the sort of biblical sense of love,

Like al-Shaitan,

Right?

It's not Satan.

It's this weirdly,

Like almost impish,

Mischievous,

Dangerous,

Very dangerous,

Can take you away to the other world,

Can kidnap you,

Can kill you,

Can do all kinds of terrible things,

But also can be an interesting teacher,

Can give you things,

Can provide you with things that you don't have.

And just by the dint of by dint of tricking him,

You learn things,

Right?

So there's a lot of stories about like,

How do you trick the devil,

Right?

So there's a lot of that.

And it's important to remember that like,

Just because something is magic,

It's not all rainbows and,

You know,

Lady Coddington's pressed fairy book,

Joyous little things.

It is,

You know,

There's darkness,

There's terrifying things out there,

Right?

The fairy tales are not just fairy godmothers,

They're also wolves,

Right?

There are always wolves in those fairy tales.

And knowing how to navigate both the wolves and the fairy godmothers,

Who sometimes can be a little bit of a handful,

Knowing how to navigate all of that is,

I think,

The job of somebody,

This is the job of a magical person.

What I would say is the job of a witch,

Right?

Being able to confront fear effectively and not deny it,

Not suppress it,

But say,

I am afraid,

But I'm still here.

It makes me think of there's a Terry Pratchett book where one of his characters,

Granny Weatherwax talks about what shouldn't be afraid of things in the forest because she should be the scariest thing there.

And I don't know that I quite go that far with it.

But I do think like,

A witch can be afraid in the forest,

But she should know that she's also the thing that that other things are terrified of.

And that's okay.

You're all in that web together.

So I do think like,

Yeah,

There are spirits that absolutely are malevolent.

They do want to hurt you.

There are living creatures that absolutely want to hurt you.

And there are things that want to help you.

There are things that are completely indifferent to you that have no interest in you whatsoever.

And you just have to learn how to navigate those relationships and those responses and those interactions the best you can.

And I find that spirits are a lot like people.

They will work with you.

They will communicate with you.

Oftentimes you asked about old gods.

Most of the time what I'm working with or whatever is kind of local to me,

Whatever the local spirits are to me.

So in that forest,

There was definitely a spirit we associated with the stone house and it was kind of a devilish trickster figure.

And there was also a spirit that lived in that well that we kind of ticked off one time and we had to fix that.

So we had,

You know,

We have those.

And then I moved up to Pennsylvania and there was this natural spring in the center of our town that had three spring heads.

And there was this whole like,

Park kind of built around them.

And I realized kind of like,

Oh,

There's there's like three sisters.

And I started thinking about them as these sort of three sisters,

These three water bearing sisters that were spirits.

Well,

Then I did some more digging and I found out that the name of our town was derived from the name of a town in the Czech Republic where the founding myth of Prague in the Czech Republic involves a goddess and her two sisters and who had this these baths,

These springs and wells that I had literally stood in years before.

And so I was like,

Oh,

Oh,

This is because this area was kind of settled by people from the Czech Republic area.

And I was like,

Oh,

This is crazy.

There's this weird overlap.

And that was when I was like,

OK,

So my job here is I have to take care of these springs.

I have to take care of this this this waterway.

And so I would do trash pickups and clean it up.

I would feed the ducks that lived there.

I would gather the water to use in spells.

I would gather things that were from around there to use in spells as well.

And I got to be really close with it.

And now I'm away from that.

So I have to relearn the space.

I'm in again here.

And that's kind of how I've approached that.

That sort of interaction with the spiritual world is to try to navigate each new environment as a new set of relationships and not to try to just come in and sort of be like,

All right,

I'm here,

Everybody,

Let's let's get to magic.

And it's much more sort of like,

So who are you?

Right now,

I've got a whole area where they have a little marsh with a bunch of cattails.

So I'm like,

OK,

There are creatures that live in that.

I want to know more about these creatures and about this cattails environment,

This marshy environment.

I want to get to know them.

And maybe we'll work magic at some point.

We're just going to see how this goes.

We're going to connect with them,

Try to form a relationship with them.

And that's the basis for the spiritual side of magic for me is that.

You know,

Years and years and years ago,

I don't know if you'll find this interesting,

Like 30 years ago,

Because I'm old now,

Maybe 25.

Anyway,

So I randomly went to the New Age bookstore in Portland and got this was back when they had CDs that you rented CDs and it was a kind of a meditation on how to meet your your spirit guides,

I guess,

Which I was like,

I don't even know if I believe in this stuff,

Whatever.

I'm going to try it.

And so I do it a couple of times and,

You know,

I meet some interesting,

I guess,

These these humans came forward,

Interestingly,

Like a monk and a nun,

Weirdly enough.

But then this deer in a business suit came dressed in a business suit.

And I was like,

That's really weird.

And I said,

What's you know,

I was like,

What's your name?

And the deer said,

I mean,

Basically,

Like,

The first letter is a but you can't pronounce it like as a human,

You can't.

And I was like,

Okay,

I my brain made this up.

Like,

It's totally I don't even know what's going on.

So I didn't think about it for decades and decades.

And then I got this beautiful tarot deck.

I think it's called the Wildwood or something.

And like the first the first card is a deer in human clothing.

And I was like,

What is going on?

I don't know what so and then I have a deer story,

Crazy deer story.

I walk the Camino.

Okay,

I didn't believe in this stuff at all,

At all in any way,

Shape or form.

But I got five signs over the course of the year that I was supposed to walk the Camino and decided to walk the Camino because apparently that was what I was supposed to do in this life.

And so I chose a route that was really,

You know,

Isolated and arduous and France had the worst I basically walked through France,

Whether it had a 90 years,

It was like hellacious.

So by the time I got to the north coast,

And I did a little bit more,

I had the experience that I was there to have and I knew my Camino was over.

I never got Santiago but I was like,

Okay,

This is why I came here.

So I took a ferry to England and spent three weeks in Cornwall.

And so I was in Tintagel,

You know,

Which is a tourist trap.

Okay,

Let's just say that.

But there is a spring there.

There's a spring that is known as St.

Necton's Glen.

And so one day early,

Early,

Early I and of course,

It's a pagan site that was then colonized by this monk.

I walked really early through the what you have to walk through this the woods.

There's fairy stones everywhere because people have built very fun.

Have you been there?

No,

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No of the woods with no mother.

No,

It should not have been alone,

Came out and just looked at me,

And then disappeared into the undergrowth.

And I thought,

Oh,

My God,

I think that deer just told me I did a good job.

Like in that many people would have gotten all that my son,

The signs that I was supposed to walk the Camino were so ridiculous that my friends were like,

Including a tarot card.

The very last sign was that I pulled the tarot card.

And the tarot card was you've not been listening to the messages you've been getting.

And I was like,

Okay,

This is ridiculous,

Because I'm have to quit my job,

Leave my house,

Like nobody does this in the middle of their lives.

The deer was like,

You,

You did it,

You,

You did what we asked.

You did it.

And now,

Now you get to go forth.

And it was such a strange experience.

And so beautiful,

And left no doubt in my mind that we're all watched after like,

We all have these spirits,

These beautiful energies that want to take care of us that want to have us walk a right path and be of service.

You know,

Because,

You know,

I interviewed this woman who's on the island of Puerto Rico,

And she's an ethnobotanist.

So she's been getting stories from all the healers there.

And and she said,

The healers are all like,

I don't do this.

I do not do this.

Yeah,

Yes.

And that is a constant theme.

That if you're if you're,

If you're like,

I'm in service,

I'm doing this because of this.

It's done with integrity and honor,

And humility,

Of course.

And so I really resonated when you said that before,

With those healers in Pennsylvania.

Okay,

My last question,

I would love you to what How do you think?

How do you think that we can bring enchantment and magic back into the world?

That is an excellent question.

It does start with for me with with what you talked about when you said there was the web,

Right,

There was the web across the path.

That's kind of what I was talking about when I was in the Stonehouse with the air was different,

Right?

There's a crackliness to it or a different texture to it.

I think we are called to stop and notice.

And that is such a central component of enchantment is stopping and noticing there's a book I love.

I wish I could pull it out.

Here's Tristan Gulley's.

And this has nothing to do with magic.

But it is the lost art of reading nature signs.

And it is just a book on like,

How do you read the landscape?

How do you look at the clouds?

How do you know what weather's coming?

You look at the stars?

How do you know where you are?

You look at the way the water level is at the bottom of a hill?

What does that tell you about local wildlife and whether or not you can walk there,

Right?

And,

And there's not it's not magic,

Not specifically magic,

But it is about observing.

It is about stopping watching,

Listening.

And that's,

That's a big thing.

Listening.

It's hard for us,

I think sometimes to do that and to just stop and go,

I'm gonna,

I'm gonna stop talking.

I'm very low.

I've been Gemini.

I'm very low gracious.

But to stop talking and say,

I just want to listen for a minute and see,

See what I hear.

See what I see.

It's like you,

You stopped,

You saw the deer,

Right?

You had that moment that the deer even made paid attention and the deer appeared,

Right?

You get that moment.

And those moments,

I think if we stop and look and stop and listen,

Stop and pay attention,

We'll find out that the world doesn't necessarily need us to go and do huge sweeping things to re-enchant it.

It is already enchanted and it's just asking us to notice it.

Thank you so much for listening to this episode of Bite-Sized Blessings.

I need to thank my magical and enchanting guest,

Corey Thomas Hutchinson,

For agreeing to share his stories,

Tell of magics and enchantments that have happened in his life,

And for educating me a little bit more about what magic can look like in this day and age.

If you'd like to find out more about this intelligent and prolific guest,

Please,

Please click the link under the episodes show notes.

Also go to the treasures page on my website and you'll be able to click on the link under his book to purchase it right there and then.

I need to thank the creators of the music used for this episode,

Taiga Sound Productions,

Alexander Nakarada,

Music L Files,

Kevin MacLeod,

John Bartman,

And Sasha End.

For complete attribution,

Please see the Bite-Sized Blessings website at bitesizedblessings.

Com.

On the website,

You'll find links to playlists,

Art,

Change makers,

And of course,

Corey's book,

All of which I hope lighten and brighten your day.

Thank you for listening.

And here's my one request.

Be like Corey.

Understand,

Deeply comprehend that this world is in fact magical.

It's inherently enchanted.

Then go out and notice,

Go out and start a conversation,

Go out and witness that enchantment and that magic that's always,

Always,

Always eternally around you.