Shay Vande

“I wanna look like what I am but don't know what someone like me looks like. I mean, when people look at me I want them to think-- there's one of those people that reasons, that is a philosopher, that has their own interpretation of happiness. That's what I am.”
― Louis Graydon Sullivan, We Both Laughed in Pleasure: The Selected Diaries of Lou Sullivan

“Imagine you have the power to change and shape reality and you have thousands of years of magical knowledge at your fingertips because of the internet. But right at the time when humanity leans dangerously close to the brink of extinction, you use all that to… put pentagrams on knee-high socks? It feels weird, right? I don’t think the commodification of witchcraft is entirely witches’ fault. Capitalism is really good at neutralizing a threat through commodifying it. Put a price tag on something and you can own and control it. Finding your inner power is so important, especially for women, girls, queer people, and people of color, who are told so often to shrink themselves for others. Witchcraft is a tool for accessing that inner power, and it gets me so mad to see all this potential energy directed at purely surface-level aesthetic stuff. Are women really going to have our power reduced down to image once again?”
― Sarah Lyons, Revolutionary Witchcraft: A Guide to Magical Activism

“It wasn’t until I was able to name why I felt upset and identify what was wrong with those interactions that I started to gain power and get over some internalized BS. It was an initiation and an act of empowerment all in one. I felt the same way when I discovered socialism. Suddenly I had a framework to describe power and money in the world in a way I didn’t before. I could name the things I thought were wrong, instead of vaguely pointing at things like poverty and saying “I don’t like it!” Naming oppression doesn’t make it go away, but it gives you the power to fight an actual problem instead of just flailing around boxing with shadows.”
― Sarah Lyons, Revolutionary Witchcraft: A Guide to Magical Activism

“Another uncomfortable truth is that much of the “magical” stuff being sold by big companies has been made in factories or dug up from mines that don’t treat their workers or the earth very nicely. I know, I know, there’s no truly ethical way to consume under capitalism (I’ve seen the meme), but it does sometimes feel ironic that people buy something to make them feel empowered, when the person who made it is so disempowered themselves.”
― Sarah Lyons, Revolutionary Witchcraft: A Guide to Magical Activism