season 3, episode 3 - reading runes & shipping orders with siri vincent plouff
listen in for a special offer today from our guest! our guest for episode 3 is siri vincent plouff! siri is a nordic folk magic practitioner who wears many hats. they are a teacher of witchcraft, tarot, and runes, as well as the proprietrix of the northern lights apothecary. their goal is to make learning witchcraft fun, while still maintaining historical depth and making space for queer identities. they are also focused on booting the racists out of heathenry through examining the true cultural root of nordic magical paths. they are a student of kari tauring and johannes gårdbäck. they and their co-author cassandra snow have a book coming out in 2022 called lessons from the empress that is all about living a creative life, and using the tarot to do so. you can find them online at northernlightswitch.com, on instagram @northern.lights.apothecary and @northern.lights.witch, and on twitter @northlightwitch, as well as listen to their podcast heathen's journey.
each season we read a new book about witchcraft practices around the world with the #snortandcacklebookclub, with a book review by ash and the occasional guest helping us close out the season. this season's #snortandcacklebookclub read is brujas: the magic and power of witches of color by lorraine monteagut.
take the fibre witch quiz at ashalberg.com/quiz. follow us on instagram @snortandcackle and be sure to subscribe via your favourite podcasting app so you don't miss an episode!
seasons 1-3 of snort & cackle are generously supported by the manitoba arts council. you can support future episodes of snort & cackle by sponsoring a full episode or transcript.
transcript
ash alberg: [Upbeat music plays.] Hello, and welcome to the Snort and Cackle podcast. I'm your host, Ash Alberg. I'm a queer fibre witch and hedgewitch. And each week I interview a fellow boss witch to discuss how everyday magic helps them make their life and the wider world, a better place.
Expect serious discussions about intersections of privilege and oppression, big C versus small C capitalism, rituals, sustainability, astrology, ancestral work, and a whole lot of snorts and cackles. Each season, we read a new book about witchcraft practices around the world with the #SnortAndCackleBookClub with a book review by me and the occasional guest helping us close out the season. Our book this season is Brujas: The Magic and Power of Witches of Color by Lorraine Monteagut.
Whether you're an aspiring boss witch looking to start your knitwear design business, a plant witch looking to play more with your local naturally dyed color palette or a knit witch wondering just what the hell is a natural yarn and how do you use it in your favorite patterns, we've got the solution for you.
Take the free fiber witch quiz at ashalberg.com/quiz and find out which self-paced online program will help you take your dreams into reality. Visit ashalberg.com/quiz [upbeat music fades out] and then join fellow fiber witches in the Creative Coven Community at ashalberg.com/creative-coven-community for 24/7 access to Ash’s favorite resources, monthly zoom knit nights, and more. [End of intro.]
I am here with Siri van … wheww. I’m gonna fix that. [Snorts.]
I am here today with Siri Vincent …
siri vincent plouff: That’s the normal of my names! [Both laugh. Ash snorts.]
ash alberg: Oh man. Siri Vincent Plouff. Wow. Okay. That should not have been that hard for me. This is first thing in the morning.
Siri is a Nordic folk magic practitioner who wears many hats. They are a teacher of witchcraft, tarot and runes, as well as a prop … proprietrix … Wow. I'm so sorry. Of Northern Lights Apothecary. [Both laugh.]
The sad thing/the thing that all of our listeners know at this point is that this is, it's not getting edited out. We're just going to move forward.
siri vincent plouff: All right.
ash alberg: Oh man. Their goal is to make learning witchcraft fun while still maintaining historical depth and making space for queer identities.
They are also focused on booting the racists out of heathenry through examining the true cultural root of Nordic magical paths. They are a student of Kari Tauring and Johannes Gårdbäck. They and their coauthor, Cassandra Snow, have a book coming out in 2022 - this year - called Lessons from the Empress that is all about living a creative life and using the tarot to do … [audio cuts out.]
Oh, I'm so stoked about that. Hi Siri!
siri vincent plouff: Hi.
ash alberg: How are you?
siri vincent plouff: I am good. And I'm very impressed that you mixed up Vincent but were able to get Johannes’ his name correct.
ash alberg: I know. [Siri laughs.] Yeah. This is where we are at. Like it has nothing to do with like how familiar I am with anything. I just trip over my tongue randomly.
Oh man. It is the morning everyone, when we were recording this, and we are both needing to consume way more coffee. Well, I am. I don't know if you need way more coffee. I need way more coffee.
siri vincent plouff: I'm on my first cup of the day. It's fine.
ash alberg: Yup. And this is of course when Willow decides to grab a bone. Okay.
This is going to be an interesting episode. I'm also stoked because it is actually going to be an interesting episode in terms of contents, because the work that you do is, I think, really fucking cool and really important. And also we were just talking before I hit record about the fact that for white folks that are trying to dig into their ancestral witchcraft right now, especially like rune work and Nordic slash like generally that like Northern European history has been co-opted by violent racists and Nazis.
And so finding resources that are reliable when you are just getting started is really tricky. So I'm really excited for people to get to hear you and learn more about you and then be able to find you, and then also find the resources that you offer because as is very important, you cite your teachers and you cite your sources.
And I think that's just like for everyone an important thing for us to be doing, is like citing our teachers and citing where we get our knowledge from so that we can create those, those lines that … yeah.
And then also like for queer folks, just like finding ourselves in modalities and in traditions that are … especially like, if you're looking at, let's say the last 500 years’ worth of the history of it ends up being extremely binary. And so figuring out, like, how do you fit your queer self into magic when all of the resources that you are finding are very like, man, woman, you can do this, you can't do that, and where a lot of teachers still continue to follow those lines.
I'm really stoked about this. This is going to be fun.
siri vincent plouff: Yay!
[Quiet grinding sound in background.
ash alberg: I'm going to steal Willow's bone from her because it's actually … I don't know if anyone can hear it, but it's really distracting to me. [Laughs.]
siri vincent plouff: I can totally hear it.
ash alberg: Yeah, we're just gonna grab that. [Both giggle.] And while I do that, can you tell us a little bit about you and what you do in the world in your own words? [Laughs.]
siri vincent plouff: Yeah. So I'm at a little bit of a transitional period in terms of my career. For the last couple of years, I have been teaching the Witchcraft Immersion, which was a year-long course in witchcraft and magical praxis and stuff. And I've decided that I need to refocus my teaching offerings into more of the like very specifically Nordic roots that I have.
And the Witchcraft Immersion was originally designed as a course for solitary witches. So that would, that meant open to any solitary witches. I want it to help people find their paths, whether they aligned with mine or not. Because I actually have a pretty general sense of cultism, like largely speaking, because working in metaphysical shops will do that to you.
[Both laugh.]
ash alberg: Yes, it will! [Laughs.]
siri vincent plouff: Yeah. So that's like kind of my day job actually, like right now I work in a couple of metaphysical shops in the Twin Cities, but just for money in between other things. But I am again, like you've mentioned, the book is coming out, it's called Lessons from the Empress. It's all about the Empress archetype as self-care and compassion and nourishment and all of that and how creativity plays into all of those things.
And so we go through the tarot and it's got a lot of creative exercises in it. I'm really excited about that. And at the end of the month pending whenever this comes out, at the end of February, I will be releasing my Radical Runes course as a teachable course. Yeah, so that'll hopefully allow me a little bit more space to go into depth on certain things and then also allow people in different, in like vastly different time zones to take the course, because I've definitely had people from Australia reach out to me or something like that.
And I'm like, I'm sorry, I'm like in the Midwest, in the U.S. I can’t, I can’t help you.
ash alberg: There’s like nothing you can do about it.
I had one student recently who I was working with. I was working with an organization that had us in the Eastern time zone and I'm central, but we're an hour apart
siri vincent plouff: Yeah, it's not that big a deal.
ash alberg: No, exactly. And so normally I'm used to having students, like the most is in the UK. So, I think at one time I had a couple of people from like Sweden.
So they're pushing it. We're teaching in the morning and for them it's night, but for this one, I had somebody who, when we were starting class, it was midnight. And I was like, thank you for being awake! And also please go to bed. [Both laugh.]
siri vincent plouff: Watch the recording, please! I care about you and your sleep habits.
ash alberg: Yes! And it was a live class, so there was no recording. [Laughs.]
siri vincent plouff: Oh nooo!
ash alberg: I like, I truly just love, I know that a lot of people at this point are tapped out on, on pre-recorded classes. There was, I think, especially first year of the pandemic, everyone just hopped online and also started consuming a lot of content and they were all like, yeah, I want to learn all the things or do all the things ‘cause also they didn't know what the fuck else to do with their time since they were working from home.
And then also at the same time realized like, oh, even though I'm working from home, there's actually a lot of things I'm doing in my life. And so they would buy all these courses and then not consume any of them. And I understand the, “Oh, I didn't want to waste my money.”
But as a Sagittarius who loves to learn all the things, also as an Aries who has ping pong brain and will buy the thing and then forget about it, I have absolutely purchased a class and then a year and a half later started it and been real happy at that point. I'm like, I'm so excited to do this.
siri vincent plouff: Honestly, same though, really. If it's still available, I try to do them like within a reasonable amount of time, because I understand that sometimes people like edit their content or take it down or whatever.
ash alberg: Yeah. There's that.
siri vincent plouff: But yeah, so I'm really excited to be on Teachable because I think that it's going to open up a lot because yeah, I don't know. Just like there are people all over the world who want to learn about runes and I can't be in all time zones at once.
ash alberg: No. And it's, I think it's like a good boundary thing too, where people forget that time zones exist and I've literally seen … I've cultivated an audience that knows that I will just tell you to be an adult and like Google a thing or whatever, but like I've seen people get really mad at small businesses that are whatever time zone they are in, it ends up being inconvenient for somebody.
And I have seen more than one, like comment thread, post-shop update of whoever being like, can you just not do it at 6:00 AM? And it's, they didn't do it at 6:00 AM their time. They did it at a reasonable time their time. [Both laugh.]
siri vincent plouff: Like, what??
ash alberg: The fact that it's 6:00 AM for you, if you desperately want the thing, set your alarm, do the thing. Also realize that I'm going to bet that 99.9% of the time, those are not like actually life necessities for you to access. It is a thing that you would like to have, and that's fine. But like the entitlement attached to being like, how dare you run your business at a time that is inconvenient for me when other people also are like … like the reason they got mad was because like the thing either sold out or they had to wake up early in order to make sure that the thing didn't sell out before they buy it.
But like in both of those cases, like that's not the business owner's responsibility to do, to manage for you.
siri vincent plouff: Oh my god. Absolutely not. Yeah. So it's funny, like I actually, I am taking Johannes’ Nordic Magic. It's like a year and a half long, like weekly class. He lives in Sweden. He is actually Swedish, teaching Swedish folk magic. When I sign in for that class, 7:30 in the morning on a Tuesday, and it's fine because I definitely, like I wanted to work with him.
I knew that it would be … like, I knew that he was in Swedish time. So like I knew that there would be a time difference and I, one day a week, I just get up extra early. And if I absolutely can't do it, I catch the recording later and it's fine. And it is absolutely not Johannes’ fault it's seven 30 in the morning for me. [Both laugh, Ash snort-laughs.]
ash alberg: Oh yeah. That … just the like weirdness that there's like just extra levels of strange customer service that gets involved when you are running an online-based business. And there's something really fucking cool about it.
I love having students that are from all over the world and like looking at like how many countries and how many continents listeners to the podcasts are located. Like there, like last season by midway through, we'd hit five different continents. I was like, this is so fucking cool. And also there's just, there's weird extra things that come as a result of that.
It's also why managing online spaces when you're trying to build online communities, I find if you're trying to do it in a responsible way, I just don't understand the folks that are like, here's my Facebook group. I'm like, do you have any idea how dangerous that can be if you are sleeping? [Snorts.] Like there’s people who are not sleeping.
siri vincent plouff: Yeah, totally. That's, it's interesting that you bring that up because I have a really active Patreon, which I should send you the link for that because I didn't in your little form thing.
I have too many things to promote! I don't know what, I don't know what else to tell you, but I do have a Patreon and as a part of the Patreon, you gain access to my Discord server. And I have a lovely co-moderator of that space. It's a very like low moderated space.
I'm okay, ideally we're all adults here. If you, if somebody says something that upset somebody else, then usually they just work it out. But generally speaking, like we've created a culture that is very supportive and affirming in that space, which I'm super grateful for, I think. And I don't even know how I did it. [Laughs.] Like I don’t even know how I created that.
ash alberg: Like I … I joke on a pretty regular basis that like I'm a bitch upfront. And so it like scares enough people away and it like, it's true. I care … I think part of the problem is that I … it's not a problem, it's just a factor that I have to deal with, which is that I care deeply about what people's experiences are and I want them to enjoy their experience.
And also, there's, I have pretty solid boundaries on certain things. So I'm like if you're really entitled and/or an asshole, and you're going to be like dysregulated to me and in my space. And then also then making it an unsafe space for other people, like I don't have fucking time for you.
And I will like, if you're … usually those people aren't even customers anyway. But even if you were a customer, like I will happily replace you with other people, whether it's one more person or ten more people or a hundred more people, to replace the money that you are bringing me, because the emotional labor of dealing with you and the stress that is causing me is way more than any thing that you can offer me in return.
And I, it definitely, yeah, it means that you've generally got like a slower business growth, but that also feels a little bit more supportive for me. ‘Cause it's, is my audience one that's gonna like immediately hop onto a flash sale? Not so much. But if I'm like, hey, Willow was an idiot and got injured and we had to go to the emergency vet and I've got a $2,000 vet bill, people are like, cool, this is now, I'm going to go and buy the thing I've been thinking about for the last couple of months.
And just for me, I feel a lot better knowing that is the audience that I've cultivated. And it also, at times when scarcity mode kicks in or when like self-doubt kicks in, it does make me scared of growing past certain points because I worry about the point where like, when do we get to this stage of losing control over that?
And I don't actually know if there is a point. I think it is possible to cultivate an audience that is deeply caring and is compassionate and is affirming and supportive to one another. And is also like really large. Like I would like to believe that there are more humans like that than not.
And also that we can have different experiences and come from different backgrounds and come from different spaces. And still be able to hold that for one another. Not everybody is an asshole. It's just sometimes feels like there's a lot of assholes. [Laughs.]
siri vincent plouff: Yeah, totally. [Audio distortion.] So that's interesting that you bring this up because I, in the last, like in 2021, I launched the Northern Lights Apothecary which I actually didn't really talk about it in my intro, but the apothecary is designed as a space because I knew that I was going to be slowing down my teaching offerings and really like refocusing those in this current year that we're in.
So I was like, okay, like I do still want to grow things. And I do still want have a way of I don't know, providing resources. And I was like, oh, that's literally a store sometimes. That is literally a curated selection of items that people can purchase. So I started the apothecary with the idea in mind of okay, we have resources for beginners, but we also have resources for potentially a little bit more advanced practitioners.
One of the first … I'm really working on expanding the book selection at the moment because I think that's, like, I love books. I'm very much a book hoarder. They have an entire bookshelf, like a huge Billy bookshelf from Ikea that is only occult books, and I need another one. And that's just my personal collection.
So I was like, okay, if I'm going to have a store, it's going to have a healthy book selection. But I'm also a one-person shop. I am a one queer shop. And now that like a lot of my teaching obligations from 2021 are concluded, I can focus on that a little bit more, but I have very firm boundaries around my shipping.
ash alberg: Yes!
siri vincent plouff: It is right at the top of the apothecary. If you go there, I only ship on Wednesdays, which means if you purchase something on a Wednesday after I have already taken all of the packages to the post office, sorry, you're getting it in at least a week.
ash alberg: Yeah.
siri vincent plouff: And that's just how I roll.
ash alberg: Yeah. I like, I think that's something that the world of Amazon has really fucked with, is people's concept of a. how expensive it is to ship, like the actual price of shipping a package. And then the … like, most of the time that does not include the cost of materials to pack your fucking order.
Like the amount of money I spent last year on shipping supplies is truly stupid. And I also recycle a lot of shipping supplies. And still …
siri vincent plouff: I have this cupboard, you can say this like awkward door behind me.
ash alberg: I love those doors. [Laughs.]
siri vincent plouff: Behind that awkward door is all recycled packaging supplies.
ash alberg: Yep.
siri vincent plouff: Like that’s … I just have a, I just have a disaster closet. [Laughs.]
ash alberg: Nobody needs to see it. I have a room in my basement that in theory is the loom room ‘cause I actually have a full-sized loom in the corner that I can't actually get to because I have all of it. And like they're broken down! Like it's not like I leave like full boxes and just stack them up.
Like I actually break the boxes down and it's still … and then the packaging supplies, if you ever receive like bubble wrap or like air pillows, I don't ever send in my customer packages, the peanuts ‘cause I'm like, I don't even, I hate these things.
siri vincent plouff: Oh god, no.
ash alberg: But every once in a while we get things with peanuts, and so those go into my wholesale partner’s things, ‘cause I'm like, y'all can deal with this shit.
But like none of those, I don't buy any of those things. I do buy tissue paper and I buy the boxes. And then it's also, you've got your business cards and you've got thank you cards. And then I always am sending out little samples of salves and it's, there's like a solid $5 worth of shipping materials added to this package, which was not included in your price of shipping and then the fucking labor and time involved, of like packaging, like packing the orders.
And then if you're going to go and do a mail run, with this pandemic, I'm like, fuck this shit. I am just, I pay for Canada Post to come by and they come and do a pickup and it is the best thing, because I don't actually have to leave my house for those things. But like, all of those things cost money and I'm thinking, when I get somebody who's, “Oh, it does it really cost us much,” and it's yes, because it's, you're shipping a parcel. Like it is, I realize that you were buying a single jar of salve. And at the fact that it costs as much to ship that jar of salve as a cost to buy the jar of salve is annoying. And also you're shipping a parcel and that, it like, it's just the baseline cost of a parcel.
If you would like to add a sweaters’ worth of wool to it, it will cost the same thing to ship. That's fine. But I can't control those things. And also I'm not going to not charge you for those things. And if I had a staff member who was packaging instead of me, I would have to pay their salary.
So there's all of these costs that if you are not a giant corporation that has negotiated with the parcel companies to basically swallow those costs and/or have like, upped your prices to actually bury the costs within the cost of your products, like it, it gives us a skewed concept of what is the expense of purchasing a thing online these days.
siri vincent plouff: Yeah, honestly. And I don't know how many of your listener … is this like a business and witchcraft podcast?
ash alberg: Yes.
siri vincent plouff: Because I love talking about business actually, and I never get a chance to.
ash alberg: [Laughs.] We can absolutely talk business.
siri vincent plouff: OK, cool! Yeah, ‘cause we'll definitely get into like anti-racism and heathenry and some of those like really deep topics that I cover later, but I never get to talk about this stuff and I have so many opinions. [Ash giggles.]
So yeah, it's interesting also trying to run a business from an anti-capitalist model because basically like I am in business because I want to provide learning resources to people or magical supplies that they can't find elsewhere. So I have, one of the people that I purchase from often is this brand out of Portland, Maine called Trollkatt, and it is …
ash alberg: I love their candles, they're so pretty.
siri vincent plouff: They're so pretty! [Ash giggles.] Yeah. So I have these Latvian like carved candles that all have like specific significance and I have the Troll Oil perfumes from them and I … and those are things that like, because Minta actually is the one who introduced me to Johannes’ work, and so I got into trolldom and I got into Swedish folk magic through them and also, it’s frigging hard to find trolldom crafted products, because there are only so many working troll cunning in the world and Minta happens to be one of them.
So that is really exciting and fun. And yeah, it's I want to keep prices for my products down and at the same time, like eventually I would like to be able to pay myself through the apothecary, but here's a thing that people may not realize is that, like the first … and this is something Minta reminded me of after I had been in business for awhile.
They basically told me, yeah, for the first two years of your business, you're basically just like keeping capital in the business.
ash alberg: Yes. Yeah.
siri vincent plouff: Like you are reinvesting in the business constantly and you're not necessarily paying yourself unless you have employees, in which case you may be paying employees, but not the business owner.
ash alberg: Yeah. Yes. Yeah, exactly. And it's a thing that I find a specialty like within queer community and within anti-capitalist communities, it becomes this thing where people will be like, “Oh, like capitalism is all bad. Like you should just not make any money. Dah.” And the people who are saying that the loudest are the people who have massive amounts of financial privilege.
Like even if they have chosen to like, not do the work, do what, like whatever, it's because they have family money that they can fall back on, or they have a partner who brings in all of the money. And so it's not a genuine thing.
And it also, I just finished reading Money Magic by the Money Witch, who is also … our episode … [Siri gasps.] It is … okay. Her book is coming out and I got an advanced copy because we've recorded our interview for this season, which will come out after this episode comes out. But this book is literally what all of, especially, I think the queers need to read …
siri vincent plouff: Yeeesss!!
ash alberg: … because it's like a. it's written in a way where you're not having to do that mental gymnastics of like ungendering all of the languaging, but it also is like really fucking honest about … one of the things that I appreciated most was there was a section, and honestly it's like the briefest portion of the book, but it makes a really important point, which is that if you are trying to basically like offset or make amends for the privilege that you have by not being responsible for your money, you're not actually doing anybody any good, because all you're doing is like hurting yourself because by not being responsible for your money, by not paying your taxes by not dah dah dah, like ultimately you will end up having to pay those taxes and there will be penalties on top of it.
So if you're like, I don't want to pay my taxes because I'm not cool with my money going to a massive military bill, if you don't pay your taxes, you're actually going to end up paying more money to that military bill, because there will be dues and interest and penalty fees and all these other things. And so it's, and you're also not helping anybody because by trying to offset your privilege by removing your access to things, if you actually truly do not have access to any income, all you're doing is now becoming a burden on a system that is already overly burdened because there's too much inequity.
And if you are doing that while having access to capital through a partner or through family wealth or through whatever, then that is also not being helpful or genuine because it's basically performative politics through your money. And what is actually much more helpful is to be well-resourced and to bring your politics with you as you become more and more well-resourced.
And as you build wealth, it gives you more capacity to be functioning at a regulated level, because then you are able to bring in whatever resources you need, whether that is healthy food or mental health support or body work, or like all of those things that we all need. And we should all have access to. The more of us that have access to it, regardless of what our background, then it allows us to show up in a more regulated way and to be helping in a more efficient way.
And then it also gives us the ability to determine, okay, I have enough. Like determining what is enough for us. And for each person in each circumstance, that's going to look like a different number, but determining, okay, what is enough? And also now what do I do with my excess and how do I support the rest of my community and invest in the rest of my community, whether that is in resource sharing or volunteer time or literal money going to the ground?
And there are ways to build your business from the beginning that are structured to allow you to do that. And as your business grows, allow that to grow with you, like that as you scale, your ability to help also scales. And that then also protects you so that if you have a bad month or if you have a bad year that you are still doing what you have capacity for without fucking yourself over.
Like the number of small businesses that I've seen fold, because they put their, they wanted to support others and so they put that as like the top priority and also didn't have other income coming from another space to then support the business, and so then ended up folding the business. It's like that, that didn't help. Like you were able to do maybe six months of good-ish work but also that work was really stressed the whole time and putting that in that energy into the work is shitty.
And then … not that you mean for it to be shitty, it just ends up like having stress energy attached to whatever the good is that you're trying to do. And then you ended, rather than figuring out, okay, from the beginning, how do I do this in a way where I am supported and also I can do this work?
So that then instead of folding in six months, six years later, you're looking back and you're like, wow, look at all of this that I've been able to do. And there's no blame attached to the situations when that happens, because we're literally not given those supports or those resources or that knowledge under normal capitalism.
But I think it's a thing that, especially in queer culture, is just this … like the amount of unpacking of finance everything that we have to do is just like an extra barrier that is not actually that useful. [Chuckles.]
siri vincent plouff: No! Completely agreed. I think that it's hard because so much of the time we think of business as being capitalist, like we have that like “business people are capitalists,” like in our brains, but when you think about businesses as oh, this is actually a community resource, like where the hell would I get food in, under capitalism, if it weren't for this kind of organizing entity that is a business, that is a grocery store, that is selling me food.
ash alberg: Yes. Yeah.
siri vincent plouff: And so you take on that labor as a business owner and to be an anti-capitalist business owner means allowing yourself to thrive because … I think that it's really important to maintain that idea that like none of us deserves to struggle as much as capitalism wants us to struggle.
ash alberg: Yeess.
siri vincent plouff: And that means, for me, I am not going to hire anyone until I can pay them $18 an hour.
ash alberg: Yes, totally. I'm in the same boat. And then it's also okay, I can … you need to bring in extra help. And also, okay, if I need extra help and I need to pay them a minimum of this much and not minimum wage or even living wage, it's what's the actual wage that is going to support somebody and then determining, okay, I've got, let's say I've got a hundred dollars a week and I want to pay somebody $20 an hour.
That means that I can hire them for five hours. It's not that I hire them for 10 hours or for 15 hours, because I want them for 10 or 15 hours. It's, I have you for these five hours. So let me make sure that I am making the best use out of those five hours for both of us. And then that's, then we grow from there.
But it's … like during the pandemic early on, when like all of these places had to close and lay off their workers and then they went to go hire them back. And all of the staff were like, “Fuck you. I'm not coming back for a minimum wage at this place that was shitty. And right now I'm able to access support.”
Like this should be a sign, is that if you were paying your staff so poorly that employ-- like EI is paying them the same as or better than you were paying them, that's not a good sign because EI is not enough for anybody to be living off.
siri vincent plouff: No!
ash alberg: That’s a sign that you’re not running your business …
siri vincent plouff: Right! Yeah! Yeah. So that's, it's really important to me, I think, when I look at the apothecary side of my business that I am first of all, like centering … like I try to get books in that aren't showcased everywhere.
ash alberg: Yeah.
siri vincent plouff: Because like why would you like go to my store when it's also at your local metaphysical shop?
Like I'm not trying to take away from local metaphysical shops. And also, I'm focusing on what makers and artists or like other creators can I support. Which is a huge part of why I have both Mithras candles and Trollkatt in my shop because I really appreciate both of those makers.
Yeah. I'm just like looking over at my stuff. [Laughs.] I also stock a line of astrological materia from Lacey who runs The Future here in Minneapolis.
ash alberg: I’m hopping on a call with Lacey literally after we finish our call. [Laughs.]
siri vincent plouff: Oh my god! I love her so much!
ash alberg: This is so fun. I love all these connections. This is great because you guys actually, you're in the same city, aren't you?
siri vincent plouff: Yeah, we're in the same city. I actually work for her.
ash alberg: That is the hilar-- I did not know these things. And I like found you two through like very separate and not at all related situations. And this is just funny to me. [Chuckles.]
siri vincent plouff: Yeah. Yeah. So she's a friend of mine. And then when she was opening The Future back up for like in-person shopping she was like, “Oh my god, I need new shop witches. Siri, will you fill in?”
And then I ended up like filling in and now I have a day a week that I just like work at The Future. And it's fucking great because she's curated such an amazing space. I love it so much. That's why, like we're both anti-capitalist business owners, right? So I don't see her as competition for me and she doesn't see me as competition for her.
Like we have slightly different audiences. I'm more folk magic-related. She's more high weirdo art witch-related. [Ash laughs.] And there is absolutely crossover between those two, but whatever. So I think that's another thing too, is that I think that a lot of people who buy into the mindset of capitalism might see our relationship as counterproductive.
ash alberg: Yeah. Cause it's this like, everything is competition and that's super fucking unhealthy and not helpful. Like when I think of who are the people who have been some of my biggest supports in terms of like literally bringing money into my business, it's other people in my industry where we have almost exactly the same business.
And in some cases like, we are literally doing the same shit and we refer people back and forth to each other. And it's just this reciprocal thing of knowing that like they are going to support me, I'm going to support them. And it's just this like lovely energy back and forth.
I don't know if you're familiar with shine theory. It's from now, I'm gonna forget who they are. But it's from the, this pair of folks. I'll see if I can remember it and stick it in the show notes or the transcript. But basically, the concept of shine theory is that … Aminatou Sow and somebody else. And they’re two best friends who run a podcast and also have written a beautiful book and have done an audio book version of it, which sounds like their podcast.
And the whole concept of it is that by doing shine theory, then we are helping one another to shine, and we are just like supporting each other. We're saying each other's names when we are not in the same room with each other so that others know how great they are. And we're just like helping each other to move ahead in this world, because that's how we're basically gonna fuck with capitalism is by getting all of us into the spaces and building new spaces through the process of that to offset what has been done to keep all of us out of those spaces.
siri vincent plouff: Yeah. Yeah. I love that. I actually just Googled them really quickly while you were talking ‘cause I wanna remember that. Yeah, I think that it's, I don't know, just like, allowing yourself to help one another and in businesses so important.
So this is connected to my Nordic, like folk magic, Nordic folk roots ethics. In runes, there are two runes. One is Gebo, which basically looks like an X and one is Mannaz, which basically looks like an M but with like extra, like an X in the middle, instead of just the two.
ash alberg: Yes.
siri vincent plouff: And Gebo is the idea of a gift giving and gift receiving, and it is all about reciprocal relationships.
So we know from the literature and from the culture, as it has been like handed down like in Scandinavia, that gift giving was very important for our ancestors. And that gift receiving was also very important. Everybody had a … there were like, I don't want to say rules, but there were like suggestions for how to give and receive gifts, which I think is really beautiful.
And the fact that, like so many stanzas of the Hávamál talk about that just shows how important it was in the culture. But then Mannaz represents humanity. And Mannaz is a rune that just shows like this, the level of support that is available when we are truly reciprocal in our relationships.
ash alberg: Ooh, yes.
siri vincent plouff: When we are truly giving and receiving in equal measure, we are able to support the elderly, we are able to support children, we are able to support people who need it the most, but we also gain support ourselves, because of that's just like the cycle. It's the system, it's the natural way of being in this sense.
And so once … I was, I've been anti-capitalist for like most of my life basically, but once I put it in those terms for myself, I was like, ooooh, ookay. Like it's about thriving and reciprocity.
ash alberg: Yes.
siri vincent plouff: And it shows a model for actually doing it without all the … it is theory, like it shows a model for actually do it, which is very important.
ash alberg: And it's also, that is what the natural world actually functions as. It's not just extracting all the time or just giving all the time. Like those two extremes are not actually present in the natural world outside of humans. Like it is, when you think of how other things, all things, exist in the ecosystem, there is a process of give and take constantly at play. And that's what we should be doing, is that flow.
And I was talking yesterday with someone who … now I’m … was it yesterday? I have no concept of time anymore. [Siri giggles.] But Heather, when I was … I've been recording a lot of podcasts episodes this week for the upcoming season. And Heather was talking about how she hadn't been spending money on something recently.
And so there was that stagnation and scarcity was at play. And I was like, oh my god, you're right. Like when we … there is as much scarcity at play when we have given everything away, as there is when we are hoarding everything. Like that hoarding is a natural response to scarcity mindset where we're like, we don't have enough, or we feel like we don't have enough and therefore we need to hold onto what we have, even if that stuff has gone stale or gone rotten or gone whatever, like there … and what you need is for everything to be in constant flow.
And maybe sometimes it's a faster flow one way or the other, but there's needs to be a steady, ongoing flow.
siri vincent plouff: Yeah, absolutely. I think that the runes as … the runes are interesting as a system of divination and as a kind of cultural artifact because like they're literally letters. So that's not super mystical. [Ash giggles.] At the same time, like letters create how we form language, how we form ideas. Letters are how we make language more concrete, and therefore they do have power.
And I think that is really important to explore. And also because they are letters that are no longer in use, I think they've taken on an extra, like level of spirit. And I know a lot of people who have done like trance work with runes and that kind of thing where the runes almost show like different aspects of nature at play.
And they feel like forces of nature. They're also simple enough letters that you can find them, like when you're out, like going for a walk, right? Oh yeah. That's that's Fehu, like on that tree right there, or that's Ingwaz or something. So yeah, so you can find them in a lot of different places and whether you choose to read them that way, I think is … certainly, if you're looking for a sign that can be a sign.
If you're not looking for a sign, it's just a friendly hello. I forgot why I started talking about this … but yeah, I think that it's an interesting way of organizing information and specifically organizing how we interface with the world that we find in Nordic magic. Creating symbols, utilizing symbols, creating bind runes, creating the more complicated rune staves, like from like Icelandic grimoire tradition and that kind of thing.
It's all about how we're representing our relationship in response to nature. And I just get really excited about that.
ash alberg: Well and it's funny too, ‘cause having been to Iceland and traveled around, literally like they will draw ruins into the landscape and draw staves into the landscape.
As of me … I love Iceland and I feel like it's also a really good example of like why wilder spaces that have more extreme weather and climate patterns just remain more like overtly mystical spaces because you literally, you have to figure out how to appease those weather spirits and whether you want to admit that you are magical or believe in magic or not, there's still that sense of, “I don't believe in this, but I'm also not going to push it.” [Siri giggles.]
Where it's like, ah, the fairies are here. We'll just build the highway around the fairies. Like I remember driving around and there was this one field that like everything else around was very manicured. We were going through some farmland and it was quite manicured, and then there was this one hill that was not. And the reason for that was because that was a cursed hill that like hundreds of years ago, somebody had put a curse on and an animal had gone to feed on it and had died.
And this was at a time where you're reliant on the livestock, we're still reliant on the livestock. But like at that time it was much more like, “you will die this winter if you do not have that cow,” and the cow died.
So since then, like for hundreds of years, everyone who has then been stewarding that land is okay, we'll just not chance that. Up to, I think this was 2017 was when I was there, and it's okay, yeah. this is the way that honestly, I think all of us should be functioning. But yeah, I don't remember where …
siri vincent plouff: I think that's a broadly Scandinavian thing as well. Because I definitely like, in Norway and Sweden there are definitely those “oh, we just don't touch that,” or, “oh, that's where the that's where the tomte lives” or “oh, like that's this other thing” and it's maybe a little bit less dramatic than Iceland.
Icelanders tend to be very dramatic and extra. [Ash snorts.]
ash alberg: Like the whole highway is just, the plans move around the fairy hills.
siri vincent plouff: Yeah. Yeah. Whereas in Sweden and Norway, they'll be more like, okay, how do we appease?
ash alberg: Yeah. Yeah.
siri vincent plouff: Like we can talk to them in a, like a PS, at least that's my understanding. I think that there are more people in power in Iceland who are more … I don't know. I'm talking out my ass right now, but I do think it's a generally, I do think that it's a generally like Scandinavian way of looking at the world, like honoring the Landvaettir, honoring these weather spirits.
And Thor is one of the most important figures in Norse mythology, not because he's big, strong. He is big strong, but also he is the weather god. He’s the god of thunder.
ash alberg: I think … Yeah. And like when I think of, because all of these things also, I can literally think of Indigenous friends who do the same thing here on Turtle Island.
I can think of friends from the Philippines who will do the same thing with like their mountain spirits and like the duende and like the … and friends from the African continent that like same thing where there's just regardless of potentially what religion, like monotheistic religion you now have on top of that, if you are still connected to those ancestral roots, then there is … and those ancestral practices, then there is more of a connection to listening to the land and being in relation with it.
And on the opposite end of that, I have experienced walking through spaces where the land is clearly so angry and so fucking haunted and so damaged. And it's often spaces that have seen massive amounts of trauma from people who are not from that land. And like here on Turtle Island, really fucking obvious when you walk on … I'm sorry, but the whole fucking New England area is just like heavy trauma.
And there's, it's because there's no acknowledgement of what has been done to the people and to the land there. Or like some people acknowledge it, but it's not like widely being acknowledged. And so the land is just like holding onto that.
And when you are in tune with that kind of vibration, you feel it. Like it was same when I was in Poland, that land was so fucking haunted because recently, but also like through time, there has been so much trauma occurring on that land from people who are not from there.
And I think, I don't know. Humans are shitty and have been across history. So like I'm sure that every piece of land that has felt human feet on it has got some level of trauma and also absolutely we can be from the same space and cause trauma to one another. There's, that's not as though it's only ever from away sort of thing, we're comes from away.
But the, I think the land responds differently almost. And I have absolutely no scientific data to back that up. I just know, like when I have walked through spaces and can like, see the ghosts and also feel their presence of this, there was shitty things done here and it has not been acknowledged and the land is still really angry and nobody is caring for it, to try and make amends or reparations, or at least acknowledge, “I'm sorry that this was done to you.”
And … yeah.
siri vincent plouff: Yeah. I think that's a really interesting example because I've also had experiences where the land has felt incredibly supportive. I think that it's important to look at both, right? Because it can be so easy to pick up on the haunted, angry energy of land. And as someone who is an animist, I do believe that things that most people think of as inanimate do have spirits and ideas.
And I do think that there is a whole spirit landscape that we just don't interact with most of the time. And so the idea that I can know, like … things about the land is I dunno, it's both comforting and also who am I to know?
ash alberg: There, there is that holding that for that. It's … yeah.
siri vincent plouff: But when I went to, so my ancestors are from Norway. I don't know where your ancestors are from. Or many of my ancestors are from Norway, I should say.
I studied in Oslo for my master's degree over a summer and I was immediately at home. Like my, I have a pretty bad anxiety disorder, like that was virally tamped down. Like I felt really relaxed. I felt very at peace and amongst like where I should be in a way that in America, I feel very unsettled a lot of the time.
ash alberg: Interesting. See, it's funny ‘cause, so my two sides, the one side, primarily Scotland, but like British Isles smattering, but like mostly Scotland.
And then the other side is Polish and the Scottish side has literally like the first ship of like non-like explorer adventurers, I guess? The first group of settlers came over on that ship. And then the, my, the Polish side came over after the second World War. So like in theory should be much more connected to Poland as far as like displacement, I guess?
And I felt, I feel so much more at home in Scotland and in like spaces that have very similar, very similar geography. So like Nova Scotia, but like Cape Breton, Newfoundland, like the further north, I go, not quite at tundra level, but like very much that kind of, I don't even technically know what it's called.
That feels very familiar to me. And when I was in Poland, nothing about it was settled and it was … and I don't know if perhaps part of that is because the trauma within the family line from Poland is so fresh. That it's, that, that is why it is unsettled.
Scotland was like, Scotland is my happy home. I'm like, everywhere that I go feels like very normal. And it's just ah, yes, I'm supposed to be here. And the plants are familiar. I think also it's why Iceland feels like very comforting to me because it's, again, similar. Like my family from Scotland is Isle of Skye, like the Hebrides.
So it's let's go as wild as we can go and as rocky as we can go. And so Iceland feels very familiar as well from that. And then Poland, which like in terms of landscape is actually very familiar in terms of the prairie portions and then the forest portions.
Like it's very much where I have grown up my whole life on the prairies here. But there it was I think that perhaps it was just that there was just so much fresh trauma in like on the land and then also for my familial line that there wasn't a … there, I don't know. I would like to go back now because it's been 10 years … no, more than 10 years now.
And I have a much deeper magical practice and also a lot more understanding of ghosts and how to talk to them and have boundaries with them. [Both laugh.] So I think it would be, I would love to be able to go back and see how navigating that space now would feel. But at the time I went, I was just like, what the actual fuck. [Laughs.]
siri vincent plouff: Yeah. [Laughs.] I think. Yeah. And that's the other thing too, is that I don't know, spirit work is such an absolute joy of mine, but I have very firm boundaries with spirits and have my entire life because I grew up in an incredibly haunted place.
ash alberg: There you go. I did not learn those boundaries until I basically, until I was forced to. They would like always be there and then eventually get to a point where it's okay, you guys need to fuck off, and then I would just shut it down fully.
And then when it was like, and now we're going to open it back up, I was like, oh, I need to learn how to live in a little bit more harmony here. [Laughs.]
siri vincent plouff: Yeah. So the way it works for me is that I have my boundaries up like almost all the time. And then if I want to talk to a specific spirit, I have to take the boundaries down enough to see who's around me.
ash alberg: Yeah.
siri vincent plouff: And then I'm like, you here, let's talk. And it's actually very helpful, especially what I'm trying to do client work, where, they, they may have a spirit surrounding them. And it's, I don't want to be distracted by whatever's going on in my own home and life or whatever.
So it's a very like laser focused, like approach, which I know a lot of people talk about “Oh my god, like, all these spirits are talking to me all the time” and I'm like, I could …
ash alberg: [Laughs.] I choose not to.
siri vincent plouff: Yeah. I don't need that all the time. [Both giggle.] I do love talking to spirits, don't get me wrong. But boundaries are important.
Yeah. I grew up in a place literally where like the lake in the middle of town was put in, it was a man-made lake where they had dug up, I think, something like 18 Native burial grounds to put the lake in for the logging industry. [Ash groans.] Yeah. So very angry town
ash alberg: Fuck sake.
siri vincent plouff: Yeah. Like one of my psychic friends, I said, I, this is the town that I'm from originally.
And he was like, oh my god, no wonder you're the way that you are. [Ash cackles and snorts.] He said like, whenever I go there or drive by there, it's like diving into a bowl of just spirit activity. And then when it coming out the other side, and that is where I learned magic. So when I moved away, so when I moved away from that town, I was like, why is it so quiet? [Ash giggles.]
What's happening?
ash alberg: Yeah, you’re like, did I lose all of this skill? Like, what happened?
siri vincent plouff: Yeah. [Laughs.] No, I just was living in a place that had significantly less physical land trauma. And that's really what it is. It was land trauma and yeah. [Sighs.] So not to say that there isn't trauma, like where I ended up moving to right after high school.
Like it was not quite the same as living two blocks from a lake that had been Native burial grounds.
ash alberg: Yeah, exactly. And I think that this is the thing that people like, literally like a foot difference can make a difference as far as how loud a spirit is. I've lived in houses where there'll be house ghosts that stay in specific spots of the house.
And if you don't go there, then they just leave you alone. I remember living in a house a few blocks away from where I live now actually, and the house ghost there, he would occasionally come upstairs, but only in our back room. But meanwhile, I was just like having a fucking time of it on the main floor.
So it was really bound to very specific spots that didn't even, it wasn't even a matter of oh, you're like attached here so you can go up and down within the same portion. It was like, I don't need to be on the second floor. I'm just going to hang out on the main floor and fuck around with this all the time.
I … we've like basically hit on all of the things already, but a little more structured. I think we've talked quite a bit about like how magic plays out in your professional life, which is that it is all of your professional life. But in terms of how you have gotten into each of the magical practices for your life on a, like on a personal level, then how did all of those things start and maybe what's something that you would recommend for someone else if they were looking to get started in similar avenues, perhaps?
siri vincent plouff: Yeah. Gosh, that's a huge question. So I was actually initiated into a Wiccan coven when I was in my teens.
ash alberg: Okay.
siri vincent plouff: I basically had always believed in magic. And then I met someone whose mom was a high priestess and I was like, oh, there are people who actually do magic. So that was my first kind of education and in terms of magic and I realized once I moved away, I was like, oh, I just really want to be solitary for awhile.
And then my practice has grown away from Wicca very specifically, because I think that for Wiccans, like theologically speaking, a lot of magic in Wicca is more rituals having to do with the turning of the wheel, of the year, and devotion to deity. And I was like that's great but I also want to do money magic or do these other things that are more like results-driven, which has really very folk magical.
ash alberg: Yes.
siri vincent plouff: So for a long time, I was combining that Wiccan ritual with folk magic approaches, not realizing I was doing so, and because of the intense racism within and like literal Nazi-ism …
ash alberg: Yes.
siri vincent plouff: … that has taken over a lot of the publishing within like Nordic magic or like Norse, I should say. ‘Cause like they don't use the word Nordic. They use the word Norse usually.
ash alberg: So that's that's a bit of a, what do they call it? A dog whistle thing?
siri vincent plouff: Not really a dog whistle. I would just say that they don't … like most of the American neo-Nazis who are like working in heathenry or who call themselves Asatru or whatever don't have direct connections to the Nordic countries or to Nordic culture. They are constructing something.
ash alberg: Yeah. Quelle surprise. [Laughs.]
siri vincent plouff: That has like a Viking flavor.
ash alberg: Right. Yeah. [Laughs.] It's not actually rooted in anything real, which is white supremacy in general. Like the whole point of white supremacy is just to remove any actual like lineage of anything and just make this really flat one-dimensional thing that has no history and no past and no ancestry and …
And also no future, like that's the …
siri vincent plouff: You give it up to be white. You give all it up it all up to be white. It's really frustrating. So my podcast is called the Heathen’s Journey podcast. And the second episode of that, actually, I do a really deep dive into the history of literal Nazi-ism and the appropriation of Nordic mythology and runes and all of that as it and how that has evolved into more contemporary stuff.
So I talk about some of the dog whistles. I talk about some of the languages. Because I released the first episode of my podcast, which feels very different in tone, I actually have thought about deleting it from the podcast feed because it just is like very silly and me like learning how to podcast.
ash alberg: Yes. [Laughs.] I understand that. [Both laugh.]
siri vincent plouff: It’s just like me going through like the nine worlds and like explaining a little tiny bit about each of them and going on a little like personal whimsical journey. And then the second episode of the podcast is, this is what racism is! White supremacy! [Both laugh.]
ash alberg: I feel like the combo of those two is a really good like intro though. It’s like, we can have some whimsy and also!
siri vincent plouff: That's my whole jam. Like I'm very intense and also very whimsical. [Both laugh, Ash snorts.]
[Ash says something inaudible.]
siri vincent plouff: So if you're interested in that, like deep dive, like I basically wrote an essay and then read it aloud.
ash alberg: Yeah.
siri vincent plouff: And you can find the transcript on my website as well with all my sources cited and everything.
ash alberg: Amazing.
siri vincent plouff: So yeah, so basically, because of all that and because I hadn't actually met non-racist heathens yet, I avoided anything having to do with Nordic magic, right?
ash alberg: Yeah. Right.
siri vincent plouff: Until I was about 28
ash alberg: Oof.
siri vincent plouff: And I am 33 now, for perspective on like how quickly that shifted. So the way I got involved in Nordic stuff really started … I did a ritual and I've talked about this before, but I love telling this story so whatever. I, in my little like quasi-Wiccan days, I did in my little quasi-Wiccan days, I did a ritual to call in the goddess who wanted to work with me.
And I did the full like Wiccan circle and I did the full, like calling the thing and raising the energy and the deity figure that came to my circle was Odin.
ash alberg: [Cackles.] Alright, super subtle.
siri vincent plouff: And I was like, I wanted a goddess. You're not like Aphrodite. [Laughs.]
ash alberg: Excuse you, sir. [Laughs.]
siri vincent plouff: Yeah. Like I was expecting like Ceridwyn or something to show up. And it was absolutely Odin.
ash alberg: Or like Brigid shows up or like something … [Laughs.] Not some …
siri vincent plouff: Yeah. Yeah. And at the time I was like, you're not the all father, you're just spirit who's saying that their name is Odin. When like the image that popped up in my head was literally like, basically like a Gandalf figure with one eye and two ravens. [Ash giggles.]
Like it's very obvious that it was Odin. So I begrudgingly started working with Odin and I begrudgingly started doing all of this stuff and I got out my runes and I would do one card pulls, but around then was when I was actually really diving into my tarot practice.
And that was also the first, like years of the tarot renaissance as I like to call it, when suddenly everybody was like, oh my god, tarot is amazing. And there were all of these new, like tarot readers in business. And I was seeing people around me who had only been reading tarot for two years creating really successful businesses reading tarot.
And like no shade, because I think that you can learn a lot in two years. And it depends on the depth of your study.
ash alberg: It's, if you spend that full two years, like really embedded in, that's more than like somebody who spends 10 years just like casually going back to it every like few months.
siri vincent plouff: Totally. But I was like, I've been reading tarot for 10 years. I can totally become a tarot reader professionally.
And so then Northern Lights Witch was born.
ash alberg: Love it.
siri vincent plouff: And I became a professional tarot reader and then I was feeling the call to work more with runes more specifically. And so I started reading some books and then I went to Norway and I felt really … like Iceland and Norway, and I felt really at home there.
I was actually studying sustainable energy development in Norway, so like I was doing something completely different, but like I felt very spiritually connected while I was there. So then I started writing my Heathen’s Journey column when I got back for Little Red Tarot.
ash alberg: Cool. Also extra cool. [Laugh-snorts.] I’m just like making those connections in my brain.
siri vincent plouff: Yeah. It was a whole thing. It was a whole thing. And then as I was growing in my path, I ended up going to Nordic women's retreat and I'm not a woman, I'm not binary, but I was like, I'm femme enough. I actually wasn't out of the non-binary closet to myself at the time yet.
ash alberg: And I think it's almost like you, you then also get to the other side, if there's another side, of like femme non-binary existence, where you're like, I … there's a certain level at which I am willing to engage with this. And not even necessarily do mental gymnastics, I just choose to remove every single time you say woman and just replace it with the word femme in my brain.
And there's, I feel like I'm at that point of my gender journey where for the most part, I'm willing to engage with those tools and find them as being useful. There are definitely some boundaries around that though. [Laughs.]
siri vincent plouff: Yes, absolutely. So I basically ended up going to this Nordic women's retreat, meeting Kari, I began working with her one-on-one and then that's also where I met Minta. And we formed like an online friendship. And Minta told me about Johannes and about Swedish folk magic and Kari moreso does the like ancestral, like worlog, like deep vulva kind of work and Johannes is more like the, let's do magic to get results for our clients side of the practice.
And once Johannes’ next round of his class started up again, I started taking that. So I would say that I've really evolved, like I started as a Wiccan and truly initiated within a coven Wiccan. So that's a very different experience from like self-initiated solitary Wiccan.
ash alberg: Yes. Yeah. Entirely.
siri vincent plouff: No shade on that. Just like it's a different thing.
ash alberg: Totally. And it's funny ‘cause it's like the, I feel like there's also, it makes a lot more sense that then you were, it was almost … not easy, but it was not an abnormal experience to then find teachers and then be studying with those. Like, for me, I've never been in any formal coven of any sort and I do a lot of my own self study and I will learn from different teachers, but I have a really hard time with any organized religion or faith based of any sort.
And I also have a really hard time with the like guru concept of anything. And so I, when I find mentors, I find that most of the time in my own life, unless I'm like taking a class for a particular like set period of time, and then I'm like, “oh, you're my teacher and I'm learning a specific thing from you, but I don't see you necessarily as my mentor or as …” They're almost two different things in my head.
And when I think of, my mentors have always been a lot more informal. And honestly, I'm not even sure if all of my mentors realized that I view them as mentors. And it's usually it's like a friendship where I … it ends up being a friendship where I find myself very much learning a lot from them and really deepening my practice as a result of being in relation with them. But it was never set out as formally being like, I am learning from you and this is my role within this relationship.
Like it's a relationship where I suspect if you were to speak to those people, they would be like, oh yeah, we're like totally on equal footing or Ash taught me this thing. And so it's almost like a little bit of a cycle of going like back and forth on who is teaching, who what.
And … which is useful in some things, and also I find, especially with magical practice and ancestral magical practice, it has resulted in me having a really fucking hard time diving in or learning past kind of a certain point. Because there, there is a point where you do need somebody who knows more and has devoted much more of their life to whatever it is they are doing.
siri vincent plouff: Yeah, absolutely. And I think that my goal as a teacher, whenever I teach is to allow people space, to still do their own research, like outside of our work together. And to provide like a helpful container in which to learn the … very specifically in which to learn the energetics of magic. Which I think sometimes when you're just reading, it can be hard to figure that out okay, how is it supposed to feel?
What am I supposed to, like, how is this actually, how am I actually directing this energy? Like, how am I actually like working with this? And I find that to be much more my lane in terms of teaching than just I will, I will go on about like history and like more intellectual topics and stuff like that, but I try to at least get more into those energetics.
And yeah, I think that's kinda my distinction because I think that you can learn a lot solitary. I was solitary for probably a good decade of my practice. And then it was really like once I found Kari, working with her allowed me to grow and deepen, and she's really helped me, as a spiritual leader in the community, do some things that like spiritual leaders can do, which are like, reflecting back to you, “Hey, it seems like you get really activated around this. Let's maybe do a stave session around that and you can do some healing and letting go” and that kind of thing.
Which has also I think a lot of why people see a tarot reader or see a room reader, because they want to interrogate like, I'm feeling really activated around this and I can't make heads nor tails of it like it on my own, so I'm going to go to this mystic person who doesn't have a direct stake in the situation.
ash alberg: Right. Yes. Yeah. It's almost like having that therapist in terms of being like somebody who is there to help you and has the tools to help you and also is like a third party that is unbiased, but invested in you.
siri vincent plouff: Yeah. Which is honestly like … my goals for 2022. Okay. So I'm one of those people who uses a word of the year. At least I am this year. Sometimes I fall off, but my word of the year, this year is “thriving.”
ash alberg: Yep.
siri vincent plouff: And I love it because it impacts my business. I want my business to be thriving and also it is not abundance or prosperity or some of these other words that often get tied down to just being about money.
Like I want thriving relationships. I want thriving community. Like I want the thriving to expand beyond myself. Like that shine theory that we were talking about earlier.
ash alberg: Yeah. Yeah!
siri vincent plouff: But I'm also focusing on, as I'm building the apothecary, but that's its own thing. But I'm focusing on really building a good, healthy client roster of people who maybe see me regularly, maybe don't and focusing on the Patreon as a little bit more of a casual learning space and then doing the things like the Teachable class, so that I have more space to do stuff.
ash alberg: Yes.
siri vincent plouff: Than an hour long class provides.
ash alberg: Yeah. And also that. I do love doing in person classes, there's something really lovely about, about actually being able to connect. And also like the amount of … it's not as though there's no work in do-- in prepping a pre-recorded class. There's actually a shit ton of work involved, but you're able to fit it around other things in a way where, when you've got something live that needs to happen, I, on days where I'm teaching live, it's, like the whole fucking day is basically shot.
And also often I end up working at times where it throws off the rest of my rhythm and my rhythm is largely based around Willow. So if I'm teaching a class from let's say one to three, then that's normally when I'm walking her and realistically I need to be online at 12:30, which means that I need to be like shutting down my brain and getting ready by 12.
And she's not going to go for a walk that early in the morning, I'm not going to go for it. There's a reason that she and I are not out on the road morning people. Like I'm getting shit done, she's snoozing. But then it does fuck us up.
And then by the time that I like come down and finish off teaching at 3, which basically means by 3:30ish maybe, I've got myself back together, then it's okay, now we have to go and do … get, start getting ready for supper, basically. Like the, and especially in winter months where it's you've got sunlight from like 10 to 4, I don't want to take her for a walk in the dark. She, again, also doesn't want to go for walks then, which is great.
But it does fuck with my whole day in a way that like, it's fine, I've consented to it. Like I signed the contract that said, yes, I will teach during this chunk of time. That being said, if I was going to be pre-recording a class, I would have been like up and doing that at 9:00 AM while she's snoozing. And then by noon been like, okay, that's enough work for now.
And then go and do the rest of my day the way that I would normally go. I don't remember why I started talking about that. But …
siri vincent plouff: I think we were just talking about rhythms and how doing pre-recorded stuff allows for more space for other stuff. And I think it also allows for a different kind of model. So one of the things I'm really excited about with the upcoming Radical Runes course is that I'm going to be leading meditations along the way.
So there will be like soothing meditations as you are going through. There will be some kind of lecture-based stuff there'll be workbooks. Like I really like the ability to have a diverse modality with Teachable.
ash alberg: Yeah. Yeah.
siri vincent plouff: I also am planning on doing some, just like questions and answers sessions that are completely optional.
You do not need to do these to get a lot out of the class, but I do understand that sometimes people get a lot out of being able to ask a teacher like a question in person. So I will be holding office hours pretty regularly. And the way that the Radical Runes is going to work is that it will open up several times a year, but then it will close.
ash alberg: You also get a break and know that you are not needing to have committed yourself to this specific thing. All the fucking time.
siri vincent plouff: Yeah. So there'll be a whole like … there will be a marketing cycle. [Both laugh, Ash snorts.]
ash alberg: A sexy marketing cycle.
siri vincent plouff: So sexy. There'll be a marketing cycle around like when the course opens up again and when it closes. And that's actually an idea that I got from a good friend of mine, Gina Cadlic, who did the, who teaches the Astrology for Writers course. And she transitioned it all into being a Teachable class this fall but she's only opening it up like specific times a year. So you have to actually make a decision.
ash alberg: Yes. And there's something really lovely about that. Like with my classes, I've designed them in a way, like I host all of my classes on my Squarespace site because they made that available. And so I was like, ok, I want everything like in a single spot, rather than being scattered on a bajillion different platforms.
I do like Teachable as a student going through it. I didn't enjoy it as a teacher needing to like prep things, ‘cause I've done, I've done both. But I like it as a platform, as a student, especially being able track my progress.
But maybe I should check out Squarespace.
ash alberg: Yeah. I mean like …
siri vincent plouff: Because my website is on Squarespace,
ash alberg: Right. So the thing that I really enjoy about it is literally just being able to direct people to a single spot. And it's also a space that I control, right? And now everything is basically hosted on my own site so that in … because I basically just got really fucking tired of like other platforms changing the game, or like doing weird, like weird coding shit that left like gaping holes in security that I was not into.
siri vincent plouff: Yeah. So I think I'm going to do, I think I'm going to open and close twice a year, so I'll do a winter session and a summer session.
ash alberg: Nice.
siri vincent plouff: And that also really works nicely with Nordic folk roots stuff as well, because in the ye olden times, my ancestors only recognized two seasons.
Yeah. They only recognized winter and summer. And that is just like the time when the land and everything is dying and it's getting cold. And the time when everything is growing, it's no longer cold. [Laughs.] So yeah, there's a literal … in Norway when they were forced conversion into Catholicism they, there are so many Saint’s Days that you have to celebrate in Catholicism that there's actually this tool called the primstav that is like a, it's like a stick that has all of these cool little runes all over it that represent like the different Saints’ Days. So you could always remember like when the Saint date was coming up.
But they also … yes, but they also embedded a lot of like folklore. So there's one, that's just like the cuckoo, this is cuckoo’s mass and women, if you want to find a husband, should run naked thrice around a tree where a cuckoo is calling on this day. [Ash snort-laughs.] It's just like really fun folklore to explore.
And so I think I'm going to open it on the days that the primstav turns. So there's one side that's winter and one side that summer. So then the summer side starts on April 15th and the … so you're just going to have a lot of it opening up because I'm going to open in like late February anyway, but then the next time it'll open up will be in winter, like around October 14th.
ash alberg: Cool. I love that. And I love the idea of also aligning that with things that magically make sense. And like ancestrally make sense.
siri vincent plouff: Yeah. Like I thought briefly about doing like the Sabbaths, so like Imbolc.
ash alberg: But that's really more of a Scottish Celtic thing.
siri vincent plouff: It is, it doesn't make sense for me.
ash alberg: No. Like for me it would make sense, which is also the thing that I find really fucking funny about Wiccans is, I'm like, the wheel of the year is like very much a Celtic thing. If you have my ancestry, then yes, it makes sense to be celebrating those days.
And also a lot of others, other traditions have days that are like, same thing, same thing that you end up celebrating, especially if you're in the Northern hemisphere. But it wasn't actually like Imbolc or Lughnasadh or Samhain, it was like, like it's a different word.
And I think that's where it, it's hard to find a lot of material and also it's important to find that material of finding out what were those words that were used? What was the language that has now been lost?
siri vincent plouff: Yeah! So in my shop right now, I believe I have one copy left. I haven't finished my shipping for the week, which is, I know I'm late, but whatever. One queer shot.
ash alberg: That’s whoever placed an order on Thursday. [Laughs.]
siri vincent plouff: Yeah. But I believe I have one left of the Nordic, the animus Nordic wall calendar.
ash alberg: Ooh, cool.
siri vincent plouff: And it's you can get it, you can get like the Nordic animist year, which is the book that accompanies the calendar or just the calendar, or like a bundle of the two.
But I actually have it right here. So on this.
ash alberg: Oh, that's so cool!
siri vincent plouff: You see the futhark, but you also see like these different points that are primstav related. And you see other kinds of like holidays being marked on this. And this is like what … this is a more pagan version of the primstav.
ash alberg: Interesting.
siri vincent plouff: So then each one also comes with a, it's like a photo, a beautiful photo, and this is [speaking Nordic language] presents themselves. This is a ceremony inspired by the moment, a ceremony for place for the sea and the sun. On the image is [speaking Nordic language], all chairmen of the Shamanics Association, is a faith community for those who seek the sacred in nature.
The theme of the year is ritual. So it's pictures of like Nordic practitioners and ritual. So these are three Saami, I believe it's three Saami folks, doing shamanic magic.
ash alberg: That's so fucking cool.
siri vincent plouff: Yeah! I think I have one left. I don't think I'm going to restock until next year, although I am going to keep the Nordic Animist Year book in stock because it's helpful no matter what's going on.
ash alberg: Do, is that a calendar that does actually change year by year or no, because it ends up being the same date? It's just that whether it's a Tuesday or Wednesday doesn't change.
siri vincent plouff: I think because it's the, it's more of like the primstav style, like the theme of the photography changes every year, and the dates change, but they don't usually … the dates are really small on here, so there's like Saturday the 15th coming up or, whatever, but it doesn't have a full, like actual Gregorian calendar on it.
It's much more so like working with the rhythms and understanding the symbols on the calendar and everything.
ash alberg: Very cool.
siri vincent plouff: Yeah.
ash alberg: So neat. So …
siri vincent plouff: Anyway, that to say that normally after the launch that will be in late February, I'll keep it open for probably like about a month. And then the next opening will be October 14th.
ash alberg: Yeah. Cool. So we're really good at going on like very long tangents that may or may not be interesting to other people, but that is ookay. That is this podcast in general. [Siri laughs.]
What is something that you wish you'd been told when you were younger about magic and witchcraft and ritual?
siri vincent plouff: Hmmm. [Sighs.] I wish I'd been taught a system of boundaries younger. So Kari works with a system of boundaries called the Frith and Grith concepts, and that is within heathenry and Nordic magic in general, but she has like a very specific way of analyzing them. And it's an incredibly useful tool just for life.
Like it's a very useful tool for like understanding how to handle conflict and stuff like that. So I think that if I'd had that at a younger age, that would have been really good. The other thing that I really wish somebody would have taught me earlier is that magic works.
ash alberg: [Gasps.] Yes. Yep.
siri vincent plouff: A lot of people couch magic in terms of ... especially, and this is because I was initiated Wiccan, right, so like it's a lot more about the ritual is a lot more about the devotional aspects of magic, which is beautiful and wonderful and I love it, but also, magic works. Like you can do a spell and get results. And a lot of people I think, talk about magic and ritual as if you're more so doing it for the mindset shift or you're more so doing it for something that is a devotional practice.
And that is very beautiful. And I do that kind of magic as well, but also, I think that in saying that it's all about devotion then you really isolate, people who may do magic for needs …
ash alberg: Yeah!
siri vincent plouff: … having their needs met, or people who are more interested in the actual like practice. Which I think is why I associate myself as being like a Nordic witch, but also like a folk magician, because folk magicians are like, they're like the cunning folk in the community who go to when you have a sore tooth or something, and they tell you to bite on a clove.
ash alberg: Yeah, exactly. It's, here's the practical thing that is going to … like here’s some magic that will actually help you accomplish a thing.
siri vincent plouff: Yeah. So that is something that I wish I'd had earlier. And I do think now though, that the culture has shifted enough, like when I was initiated in my teen years that priestess had gone through a lot, like she had been fired for being pagan. She'd been, like she'd gone through like discrimination for being Wiccan.
So it was very important to distinguish oh, this is a religious devotional practice. Not like that crazy witchcraft that you're trying to discriminate against me for practicing.
ash alberg: It was literally like needed to become a religious entity specifically to give people the protections legally that are afforded to folks of other faith-bases.
siri vincent plouff: Exactly. And this was coming right off of satanic panic in the nineties too, when I was initiated
ash alberg: [Laughs.] Great. Good times. [Sarcastic.]
siri vincent plouff: So yeah. [Ash snorts.] Like in the Midwest, satanic panic lasted longer than the eighties. Let's just put it that way.
ash alberg: I think it's still existing to be completely honest.
siri vincent plouff: Yes. In certain city, certain like small towns and cities, for sure.
Yeah. Yeah, I think like the culture in general has shifted. And I think that, people who are getting into magic now have more access to this idea that magic is real and that you can use it to produce important results for yourself.
ash alberg: Mhmm. Which I think is also part of why it becomes extra important for people to have access to the resources that are going to teach them to do that properly, because if we're going to be doing magic with the goal of end results, like one thing that I found fascinating about Iceland was that the folklore and the magic associated with the folklore felt very … it's trickster energy, but like good trickster energy, if that makes sense. Or like understandable trickster energy.
But like a lot of the history and the stavs and everything, if you read a book that like outlines the stavs, there is some fucked up shit in there. And three quarters, I swear, of the stuff that is at least peddled to tourists is really, it's like really violently protecting yourself against thieves and murderers and people who are like trying to steal your wife or whatever.
It's like there's some very … like shit that I'm like, this is not my kind of witchcraft. And also was, when I would walk into spaces that had that kind of energy attached to them versus walking into spaces where you can go into like old witches huts and like find runes carved into the floor and built into like the … I forget the name for them, but basically like your shoe inserts, like where you would literally like have runes knitted into your shoe inserts so that you were walking on protection.
siri vincent plouff: Or like you find a witch’s bottle inside the walls, like inside a European home.
ash alberg: Exactly. Exactly. Yes. Like those things to me, I'm like, oh, these feel like totally fine, because they're just, they're your like general protective things. And I also, I have just the most deepest love and slight obsession at the moment with a Polish tradition of drawing protective runes like in your home and especially like around doors and windowsills. It's just, I love that so much. And I plan on doing it in my own home.
siri vincent plouff: Yeah, so this is funny. I, when I was in Norway, I was studying with somebody who became like a friend at the time, who was getting her master's in Viking studies and Viking archeology.
So she had a very different take on all of this stuff, but she had spent a year living in Iceland and we ended up talking about like Icelandic language and a lot of stuff. And one of the things that I took away from that friendship, and I don't know how real this is, and I'm sorry if there were any Icelanders who are listening to this who are about to be very offended, it's just that Iceland is a very forbidding, dark place for a lot of the year.
ash alberg: Oh, a hundred percent. The whole concept of it is like, play at your own risk. They’re just like …
siri vincent plouff: It's like in the language too. It's like they just continued to make up grammar that doesn't make sense. [Chuckles.] Like old Norse. Icelandic as the closest language to old Norse and old Norse has this thing where there … the words are conjugated and the sentence is translated and conjugated based around sounds that have been dropped and you have to know what sound is not present in order to conjugate correctly.
ash alberg: Wow. That's just to fuck with you!
siri vincent plouff: Which is fucking bonkers.
ash alberg: That is just to fuck with you. It's, “I'm going to set up these little tests for you and if you fail, oh well.”
siri vincent plouff: Like it’s just fucking bonkers. And so it's okay, like your second side, like it's dark, it's cold, it’s forbidding like for half the year, you just make up new grammar. You just make up the concept of necropants because they're so exciting
ash alberg: Necropants are so fucking weird. But this is the thing, is that the … it's funny ‘cause like you walk into spaces where it's just the normal protective runes are there, and then you walk into spaces where the necropants and its ilk were the go-to magic and like the foulness of the magical energy that sits in those … I'm like, this is like being back in Poland with all the hauntings!
Like it's … and then also when you then look at, I like, I, again, theory that cannot be proven by anything. [Chuckles.] These are just my thoughts. But like when you look at then their witchcraft trials, it was unlike the vast majority of the rest of Europe, largely male wizards and male witches who were being attacked. And I'm like, I wonder [snorts] patriarchy correlation of like really foul, fucked up non-consensual magic?
And that ends up being who was then being persecuted versus … and now that I say that, I feel like I should maybe take it back, ‘cause not that anybody should be persecuted for your magic, obviously.
siri vincent plouff: Okay. But here's maybe a different framing. So if you were a kind of person who is going to skin a corpse to make a pair of pants …
ash alberg: So that you can get their money!
siri vincent plouff: So that you can get their money, like that is a very different kind of like, “You did a fucked up thing. Oh, you help somebody like, heal with your herbalism,” or whatever.
ash alberg: Exactly. Or you like made it easier to birth the calves or something like that.
siri vincent plouff: Yeah. That's more, that's more, that's actually along the lines of like corpse desecration, which is a crime.
ash alberg: Yes! [Laughs.]
siri vincent plouff: To this day. Like for the … so I think that's what you were trying to get at.
ash alberg: Yes. Yes. And this is my thing is, as we are like learning more about … I think maybe this is part of it is that as magical studies and practices shift away from needing to only be devotional and more into the mainstream and where this is also the thing is that the stuff that is being paddled to tourists from magical traditions around the world is very much frequently focusing on here's the like, stuff that we find funny, or here's the stuff that's like a little fucked up. And that's the thing.
It's the content that we also will watch on TV, right? Like it's like really violent and really fucked up. And that's the stuff that gets the most views and/or is like comical and weird, like that also then ends up being messed up but then we are selling and peddling and it removes the rest of the context around … it;s like when you watch porn and it's you're watching the free BDSM porn. [Siri laughs.]
So this is maybe a context that not everyone's going to love, but when you're watching like a free clip, it removes all the pre-care, all the aftercare, all the consent, like setting up of rules, which if you have a trained eye, you're like, ah, I see what happened right there. I know that was like the person, the dom in that situation like doing a check-in, but if you're not trained in that, and that is then the way that you are exposed to something that has a lot of fucking rules for good reason, it's the same with a magical practice where it's like, if the way that you are learning about Icelandic magic is necropants or the way that you are learning about hodoo and conjour is about, the curses and the hexes that you throw, that's, it's yeah, okay, at least you know that they exist, but like it's not a responsible way of then learning how to be initiated into a tradition, whether you have ancestral ties to it or not.
And then we add on the layer of, do you have ancestral ties to it or not? And also like blood quantum being white supremacy and like there, there's all of the nuances.
siri vincent plouff: Yeah. Okay. So I'm going to say something that is like my opinion on like closed traditions, because I think it's very important that you brought up this idea of blood quantum and like feeling like you need to prove your ancestry in order to practice certain traditions.
So first of all, a lot of people do not have access to their ancestral records. Especially like slavery, for example, has here in America, like totally decimated the African-American community’s like connection to African origin in a very traumatizing way. So I think that to demand that people back up their ability to practice something based on their, like what percentage of that like ancestry they have, isn't useful.
I think what is useful is learning from people within that tradition and actually finding a lineage. So you see, I'm a very, like teacher-oriented person. [Laughs.]
ash alberg: I love this. I appreciate this. [Laughs.]
siri vincent plouff: So none of what I practice, like Nordic magic is not closed. And if somebody tells you that it's closed because of blood quantum, they are in Nazi, literally.
ash alberg: Yeah. [Both laugh.] That’s a good distinction. [Snorts.]
siri vincent plouff: That is probably the biggest thing. But, I'm also looking at, people who are not of … oh my god. Brain fart. Like people who are not of Cuban descent practicing something … like people who are not from Haiti practicing Haitian vodou, for an example, if you are not Haitian, but you have been learning directly from a Haitian priestess, who the fuck am I to say that you're not allowed to do that?
That is the Haitian priestess’ job.
ash alberg: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah.
siri vincent plouff: So like it's not for me to gatekeep that necessarily. It is the job of the elders in the community. And I think that a lot of people now are disconnected from their ability to find elders in different communities. And there's a huge emphasis on solitary practitionering … the, there's a huge emphasis on solitary practitioners but what that does is that it cuts us off from this, the actual lineages of these things.
And my take on it is like there are closed traditions, but, or like initiatory traditions, but if the leaders and teachers in those traditions allow you in and actually initiate you, if there is a path to initiation and practice within that tradition and you follow it correctly, that is not cultural appropriation.
ash alberg: Yeah. Yeah. And I think that there's … that brings up a really important point that is the performative allyship of calling someone else out when you're not actually involved in anything about … you don't know fucking anything about them, you are … and you're doing it on behalf of somebody else where it's like, if somebody's from … and also the, like taking one person's opinion, who is from a certain tradition as being representative of every single other person who shares that identity, right?
There's nuance and complexity involved in these things. And it's not a simple, like black and white, like yes or no situation of “Yes, you can do this” or “No, you can't,” or “Yes, that person's opinion matters” or “No, it doesn't.” But I do think that there is importance in recognizing like who has authority in certain things, including that en elder and a tradition is going to have more authority than you random person over here.
That does not necessarily mean that person's opinion is not valid, depending on what reason they are having an opinion about it, but I think we, there's this like … it, when I, so my degrees ended up being very much in non-hierarchical training. I did theater degrees in and my masters in collaborative devising, which basically means you make shit up with other people in theater. [Siri laughs.] Which makes … like I was exposed to basically every good and bad example of how to work in non-hierarchical ways.
And ultimately the thing that I have taken from that and can always spot when I see folks that are like, “We're working in a non-hierarchical way.” I'm like, yeah, but you don't know what the fuck you're doing, because what does end up being important in order for you to actually get any important work done is to have people who are experts having their expertise be utilized.
So like in theater, that means that if you've got a collective of six people working, and one of you has 18 years experience working in wardrobe and textiles, and everybody else in the group goes and buys their clothes at Target, when it comes down to your costumes, that is the person who should have veto power.
And yeah, you might vote as a group. And five of you say, we hate this. And the one person says, this is what we're doing. And so maybe that's like a pretty off-sided group. And so then maybe you now need to be looking at like, why is it that heavily off-sided? But if you are at a point where you are essentially at a standstill and/or a large chunk of you doesn't agree with a thing, but none of those people have expertise in that area, you fucking have to trust the person who has expertise because they just have more knowledge.
And whether you can see it or not, in that moment, there is a reason that they are weighing the way that they do. And that doesn't mean that you just take everything at face value, right? Like it's, I'm not saying that we go again to this guru thing of … because we see how fucked up that ends up being and how culty it ends up being, right? But there is something of, if somebody with expertise in an area says, look, this is what we're doing and I will give you these reasons and you need to trust me from that, then you do need to trust them and give them at least some space to prove why they are making that decision.
And if you don't have … what is the, I was going to say a dog in the fight, and that is a terrible metaphor that I am very against. But if you don't have a hat in the ring like, why the fuck do you care so much? Like, why do you need to prove that your like, you’re right by saying that somebody else shouldn't have access to a thing when other people who actually are like, from that tradition have said, “Yeah, we're going to let them in.”
You don't know why they said they're going to let them in. And if you aren't actually involved in that community, then it's not your job to say whether or not. And if you are like related to that community, you can still have your opinion, but it's it still doesn't mean …
[To Willow] My love, please go away.
[Laugh-snorts.] She’s just fucking with everything around me right now. [Siri laughs.] But there's, I don't know. This is not a very coherent argument.
siri vincent plouff: I'm smelling what you're stepping in.
ash alberg: It’s a nicer metaphor [Siri laughs.] And by nice, makes sense.
siri vincent plouff: Yes. It's basically just like trusting the actual communities versus feeling as though you need to have ultimate authority over what is right and what is wrong.
ash alberg: Yeeess. Yeah. That's a much more coherent way of saying all that.
siri vincent plouff: Because it's if I, as a white person who has no connection to this particular tradition is going to gatekeep that tradition for other people, isn't that another arm of white supremacy?
ash alberg: A hundred percent. Yes.
siri vincent plouff: If, but if people have that tradition are like, okay, this is technically a closed tradition, but if you are an honest seeker, like closed traditions don't just die because everybody involved dies. Like there is a way that people can become involved in closed traditions and that is through gaining like actual relationships and community.
ash alberg: Yes!
siri vincent plouff: And that is an important distinction between like, “I read this book about voodoo. And so now I'm a voodoo priestess.” [Ash cackles.] That's fucked up and that is wrong. And I am 100%, I feel like I'm a hundred percent in the right in saying don't do that.
If they are genuinely practicing with somebody else, genuinely have been initiated by somebody else, who am I to say that authority is, that person who has cultural authority is making a mistake?
ash alberg: Yeah, exactly. It's like within the queer community where there's so much fucking gatekeeping within the queer community of …
siri vincent plouff: Oh my god!
ash alberg: … who is queer enough? Who is trans enough? Bi people aren't actually queer?
Like non-binary people aren't trans enough, femmes aren't queer enough. There's just, there's, it's just … and also I do understand the sense of wanting to protect the community and also being like you’re just reinforcing oppressive ideas when like, the number of times where, you know, I go to, and by all of us, pre-COVID when I could do things in public, like going to a pride events and seeing like people who are very visibly queer and have chosen to have those markers on their bodies.
And I say this as somebody who has like very intentionally done certain things to my body in order to make sure that my queerness is more visible to those who know those signifiers. But like when I see them like giving the nastiest looks at people who pass as cis and straight, and I'm like, I know those couples and I can tell you that they are both trans and queer in the way that their sexuality plays out, and you are like also way less queer in the way that you are doing your politics and living your life than those two people are.
And you are going to … like it, as a non-binary femme who has had relationships more than once with also just like cis dudes who are straightish, it's that doesn't mean that my queerness has disappeared. And it doesn't actually mean that I'm not in a queer relationship in those moments. And you're living an experience of potentially more erasure, which in like erasing people's experiences is a part of how the kyriarchy is violent.
And so it's … and talking with folks who are mixed race and their experience of not being accepted into any community that blood-wise, technically they are a part of. And it's like, these boxes do not help us. And also, I have lived the experience of how associating with an identity brings a level of peace in your life and brings in a community that is vitally important.
And so there's gotta be some sort of, some sort of like something where we learn how to be better humans to each other. I don't know. I don't know what that looks like though.
siri vincent plouff: I think to me it's really about suspending judgment until [you know] more about people and that is a lesson. Like I used to be a very judgmental person. So like I was a judgy bitch.
ash alberg: I still am.
siri vincent plouff: It's fiine. But like not gatekeeping people because of a judgment that I have about them is like a really important value of mine.
And … I don't know. Yeah, it's hard, man. [Both laugh.]
ash alberg: I think there's no … but this is what I do love deeply about this podcast in particular and just like podcasts and longer form content in general. I, the, my, my sense of enjoyment with social media in particular has really dropped off in the last year or so, not because I don't find some value in them but the inability to have nuanced conversation and to literally be given the space to have those nuances, I'm just, I'm fucking over it.
I'm like, I want to have good conversations that are deep, that go into the nuance that gives us the time and space to be able to dig into things and provide all of the caveats, because it's extremely rare that things are so simple.
That being said, I'm fully like punch the Nazis and yes, there are Nazis, but there's also a lot of folks where it's like, they're not fully a Nazi and mayb-- … there's like there's a lot more of the in-between that has … there is no value in white supremacy. There is value in having conversations with people who have different experiences and views than us up to a certain point where we are not, where we're not harming others and their ability to have access and agency in the world.
That being said, I seem to stay within my nice little left-wing bubble.
siri vincent plouff: I think that … I dunno. It's important. And so on my … I've actually really backed off of Instagram for a lot of reasons. It's a lot easier for me to throw up a pretty image of something I sell at my shop and be like, oh my god, this thing is cool. That's my apothecary Instagram.
But in my personal Instagram, which is @Northern.Lights.Witch, that's like my tarot reader, like personal brand Instagram. I don't know what, I don't know how to call it. It's like … whatever.
But I used to have more nuanced discussion there and or try to. And I have a tendency to like, I'm very queen of swords-y when I write. [Ash giggles.] I like it to be blunt, to the point, we're gonna, we're gonna make it very clear and also allow space for nuance because you need to like, not have all the bullshit that pads out the nuance.
ash alberg: Yes. Yeah.
siri vincent plouff: You need to be able to have all of that in, without the filler. But I've really backed off of Instagram for a lot of reasons. First of all, their algorithm sucks [Ash snorts] and it's really infuriating to even try to reach my audience there a lot of the time. And secondly, so as a queer person who has struggled a lot with personal, like … body image sounds so calm but with …
ash alberg: Dysphoria, all the fun shit.
siri vincent plouff: Dysphoria! And then also body dysmorphia, which is another thing that I have and all of this stuff and needing so much pressure on the image to be beautiful and so much pressure on like that. And then on top of that, like trying to conform to some sort of algorithm that's going to get my work actually seen, I'd rather just put up a pretty picture with a quote from a longer essay that is on my Patreon.
ash alberg: Yes! Yes.
siri vincent plouff: Or like a pretty picture with a quote from an essay that you can read on my blog.
ash alberg: Yes. Deeply … that is what I've started doing with my blog is like writing the more of the content where I’m not limited to character limits and then chopping it up. And even within that, like recently I had some like pretty serious anxiety crop up because I realized that there was one post in particular, which like for various reasons, I have like more triggers around just the general topic of it and also enjoy talking about it in person.
I just have a really hard time with the writing of it. And so I wrote up a blog post and then tried to chop that up and pop it onto Instagram and had a really visceral experience of anxiety in my body that I have not had in a chunk of time. Because even trying to chop it up, like there needed to be so much of the context around it that I literally could not, like I tried five times to fit just a snippet in and then fill in the extra caveat bits and realized that it, like Instagram literally wouldn't let me.
And so I gave up and I was like, I tried doing this, didn't work, made a different kind of a post out of it, but like just playing that game, which serves nobody, because also if you don't go and read the full blog post and don't get the full context and I choose to still put up the little chunk, that ends up being harmful to read because it doesn't have the context and the caveats that it needs for it to be seen as, this is not harmful when you see it as a whole piece.
But if you take out a tiny little bit of it, it can be harmful depending on the view, the lens of the person reading it. And where we are not responsible for everybody else's triggers but there are some like general large ones where we know, this is going to hit a large portion of people a certain kind of a way. And I do my best to make sure that I put the kind of cushioning around those things to let folks know.
This is not, again, it's not like a black and white thing. There's all this nuance and grayness and Instagram won’t let us pop that in. So go read the full blog poster to get it, but like that the amount of mental gymnastics to do that shit.
siri vincent plouff: It's infuriating. I think one of the major themes of our conversation that is not what I expected to talk about this morning, but I'm very glad that we're talking about it this morning, is carving out our own spaces online in which we feel safe sharing expertise.
They're open spaces. Like a blog as an open space.
ash alberg: Totally.
siri vincent plouff: Like anybody can read that.
ash alberg: Yep.
siri vincent plouff: And keeping your classes on Squarespace instead of, like on Teachable because very specifically like as witches, I know that there were a bunch of people who were doing tarot classes on Teachable where Teachable was like, oh, you can't do tarot classes anymore.
ash alberg: Yes, exactly.
siri vincent plouff: And just like took their work down. So make your own website, make it be a part of that, because then you have, I don't want to say control, but you have agency within your own space.
ash alberg: Yes. Yeah. And you're still going to deal with potentially the issue of payment processors, but you've got a little bit more flexibility in terms of which payment processors and having backup payment processors so that if one starts to fuck out, fuck you over, you're able to switch to the other and not have your literal livelihood be impacted for too long of a period of time where now you can't pay your bills.
siri vincent plouff: Yeah. It's something that actually Asali of Asali Earthwork and I talk about a lot is, make it your own. If you're not putting your Instagram posts on your blog, on your website, like you're making a mistake.
That's something that she told me and I was like, holy fuck, you're right! I could make really short blog posts. They don't all have to be essays. And Asali was like, “Siri … yes.” [Laughs.]
ash alberg: I … that's, there's a concept. Yeah. I, wow. That's a really good point. But I think that …
siri vincent plouff: Her whole idea was basically like, this is, these are your words and you don't know what will happen with this app.
ash alberg: Yes. Yeah.
siri vincent plouff: This is your work and it is precious and you need to put it somewhere that you will continue to have access to it. And that is your website.
ash alberg: Yes. Exactly.
siri vincent plouff: Asali is so wise, I highly recommend having a very wise friend that you can talk to about things. [Both laugh.]
ash alberg: But it's so true. I'm like when you think of, like Patreon started off being a space for sex workers, where it was like the one spot online where they could go and put their content in and have it be protected and have it be behind paywalls so that they have more agency over that.
But then Patreon shut that shit down. Only Fans was the same situation where it became a space for sex workers where they could go and do their work. And then that, that also recently has like really come down on that shit. And it's we, and witches experience the same thing, like tarot readers, esoterics, they end up, it's considered a high risk industry.
And I put all those words in like quotation marks, but it's people doing work that has been part of society for centuries and millennia. And we have these like weird fucking morality things largely influenced by Judeo-Christian values.
That then restrict how people are able to have that agency, which is another tool of white supremacy and is a tool of keeping people under control and under-resourced, and it all just loops itself back over.
siri vincent plouff: There's always been the village witch.
ash alberg: Yes, literally always!
siri vincent plouff: There's always been the village all Oracle or whatever.
Another, if you're interested in witches and payment processors and like all that whole issue another friend of mine, Meg Jones Wall, wrote an incredible piece in which she researched the issue of the Stripe, the biggest online payment processor, not working with people who are tarot readers or witches at all.
And Stripe actually recently reversed that decision.
ash alberg: Yes, but like very recently.
siri vincent plouff: Which is great.
ash alberg: It is great, but it's that like within my little witch coven, like I'm abnormal in our biz witch group in terms of like I am a fiber witch, and also most of the things that I sell are able to be couched under other things.
Whereas most of my friends are selling services that are very specifically magic-based, where it's tarot readings or astrology or herbalism and every single one of them has been dealing with that shit recently. And so it's like watching it from the side, I'm like, I don't even know if I want to like … I desperately want to be selling tarot decks from my friends, but I'm like, I think that could be a risky thing. And like making decisions based on like how much can I … and there is privilege attached to all of those decisions that you then make of like, how much can I risk Stripe deciding that they're going to suspend my account while they are, or suspend payments while they are looking into something?
And maybe that's going to take a month. And so can I afford to have that level of payments, which nowadays, like PayPal used to take a hundred percent of my payments. Now I do both ‘cause that is one thing with Squarespace is that if you are doing payment plans or ongoing payments, like if you were to move your Patreon over, you have to use Stripe because PayPal won't integrate for whatever reason for that.
But since enabling Stripe on my Squarespace, 75% of my website’s income comes via Stripe rather than PayPal. And so it's really fucked with my money flow. I'm just like, ah, there's this money that I don't have access to that just sits in limbo for now four-ish days. But like, it's weird shit.
And money also in general is like it, all of this stuff is actually just like imaginary shit floating through the air. Like it never actually physically lands anywhere.
siri vincent plouff: Oh my god. Like I have a degree in public policy, which means that basically half of my degree was statistics and half of my degree was economics and I also studied some legal shit in there too. I can say this as somebody who has studied economics at a master's level, it's all fucking fake. [Laughs.]
ash alberg: Yes. Oh my god! Yes. I like, I've barely touched economics right now. I am reading a book about doughnut economics, and I really liked the concept, but yeah, it's all fucking theory and it all just floats in the fucking ether and we like draw some pretty pictures to make it make more sense to other folks. But like it's still all fucking theory.
siri vincent plouff: So the one thing for my economics, the economics portion of my degree that I actually do use now that I have a store is the ideas of supply and demand basically. But that's just like super baby basics. Like setting a price so that you have a nice equilibrium of people who want to buy the thing and people who can buy the thing and like whatever.
ash alberg: Yes. Yeah. Yeah.
siri vincent plouff: So but other than that, like money is fucking fake. Like economics are fucking fake. I don't know, like I just … I’m done with it. I’m sick of it.
ash alberg: Yep. And yet we've structured our whole world around it.
siri vincent plouff: Right. And we can't opt out of that. We can't opt out of it.
ash alberg: No. And I think that's actually a really important point, which is maybe concrete enough for us to then like tidy things up in a little bow with is that we can't opt out of it and so figuring out, how do we navigate a system and systems that are highly fucked up, that we didn't opt into consensually to begin with, and that also we don't get to just remove ourselves from, and that if we can remove ourselves from them to a large extent, there is a shit ton of privilege attached to that.
And so figuring out for each of us individually, how do we make things work so that we are thriving individually and also thriving collectively? And I think that is the thing that ultimately will, as we move forward as a species, assuming we move forward as a species, Sagittarius in me chooses to believe that we will … that we can make changes and we don't have to stay in a situation that is this fucking shitty.
It does mean that those of us with more privilege need to be utilizing our privilege more to bring the collective with us and to be using our resources and being well-resourced to help then the more marginalized folks and the rest of the community that is under-resourced get to a stage of being well-resourced as well.
And not in a way where we just throw away all of our resources that are like, I will join you! That's not fucking helpful, but like where we are rebalancing an equilibrium that for way too long has been extremely unbalanced.
siri vincent plouff: I think that's also, that gets the point of that root, like Nordic folk, like idea of reciprocal relationships being the most important and like maintaining reciprocity within our relationships is like one of the most radical ways that I have shifted that personally.
ash alberg: Yes. So to tie things up in a little bow, tell us what's next for you.
siri vincent plouff: So obviously the Radical Runes class is very important and coming out soon. As of the recording of this, I don't have a release date yet. But if you go to the links that you will be provided with in the description, you'll find the date, I’m assuming.
And if you're interested in any goods in my apothecary, you can go to northernlightswitch.com/apothecary and I am giving you all a little 5% off your order with the code CACKLE.
ash alberg: Love it. [Giggles.] And that is good through March 1st, correct? Or to March 1st?
siri vincent plouff: Through March 1st.
ash alberg: Okay, perfect. Lovely. So make sure that you listen to all the way to the end of this episode and then use that within that timeframe. I think our episode is scheduled to come out on the 2nd of February, so you should have about a month to make use of that.
Thank you so much for this. This has been delightful. I was going to be like, let's talk more. And then I was like, that's not, no. [Laughs and snorts.]
siri vincent plouff: We can do another episode at another time. This is not the only time we can talk.
ash alberg: That sounds great. Yes! I keep on forgetting that I'm like, I get to a point where I'm like, oh god, I have to fill in one or two spots.
And I'm like, why don't I just re-talk to people who I've talked to already? Because for sure we have more things to talk about.
siri vincent plouff: If we go a half hour over our recording time, like I know that we've got more to talk about.
ash alberg: Yeeah. [Laughs.]
siri vincent plouff: All right. Awesome. Thank you so much for having me.
ash alberg: This has been super fun and yeah we'll do a follow-up [Laughs.]
siri vincent plouff: For sure.
[Upbeat music plays.] You can find full episode recordings and transcripts at snortandcackle.com. Just click on podcast in the main menu. Follow Snort and Cackle on Instagram @snortandcackle and join our seasonal book club with @SnortandCackleBookClub. Don't forget to subscribe and review the podcast by your favorite podcasting platform.
Editing provided by Noah Gilroy, recording and mixing by Ash Alberg, music by Yesable.