Renowned mycologist Paul Stamets is, simply put, mad about mushrooms. From tame little grocery-store white buttons to flamboyant foraged chanterelles, there isn’t much that Stamets doesn’t know about the funky fungi. A recently discovered species of magic mushroom has even been named after him: Psilocybe stametsii, which was unearthed in a cloud forest in Ecuador.

Stamets is the author of Mycelium Running: How Mushrooms Can Help Save the World and the forthcoming Psilocybin Mushrooms in Their Natural Habitats, and he has delivered brilliant talks for TED and TEDMed. He’s devoted his life to studying and sharing the magic of mushrooms, yet he’s barely gotten started. That’s because there is just so much to learn—culinarily, medicinally, nutritionally, spiritually, and beyond.

Mushrooms are especially good at building things up and breaking them down. The root structure of mushrooms— mycelium—is so strong that it’s being used to build bricks that might eventually be used to construct buildings. At the same time, through a process called mycoremediation, mycelium breaks down pollutants, pesticides, heavy metals, even radiation in the soil. Mushrooms are scavengers—their entire raison d’être is to digest and decompose other plants—which makes them a rich source of vitamins, enzymes, and active compounds that are being studied to cure disease. When it comes to human and environmental health, the curative possibilities, Stamets says, are potentially limitless.

Mushrooms are creepy, delicious, poisonous, and profound—but mostly miraculous. We talked to Stamets to find out more.

What first attracted you to mushrooms?
My parents warned me about wild mushrooms—that they were dangerous. Yet our family loved button mushrooms. I was always curious about my parents’ fears and was attracted to the study of this “forbidden fruit.”

Why do you think mushrooms have become so popular nowadays? And why should our readers be excited about mushrooms now?
There is a confluence of positive realizations about mushrooms: so many colorful species, so many delicious edibles. Taking family field trips into the woods has centered families in shared positive experiences. Mushrooms also help the immune system and are packed with antioxidants. They can support nerve health. In addition, the research surrounding psilocybin mushrooms has opened up so many new eyes to this exciting yet understudied field of science.

Moreover, the art world has rediscovered mushrooms, as well as the film community. [Stamets was featured in the documentary film Fantastic Fungi, by award-winning cinematographer, director and producer Louie Schwartzberg; along with best-selling author Michael Pollan, Dr. Andrew Weil, Timothy Leary, and others.]

You recently recommended a beautiful fungal lunar calendar designed by artist Grace Ng Dung, as well as some of Heather Brooks’s mushroom collages. [Her art site, Small Woodland Things, is also featured in this issue.] Can you talk about other mushroom-related art you’re enjoying right now?
I’m a big fan of Alex and Allyson Grey, Autumn Skye, Mark Hansen, and many others. I love artists who accurately portray mushrooms. It tells me these artists are not only skilled in painting but know the subject matter personally. They have my great respect.

What are some of the most exciting developments in mycology?
Mushroom mycelium is beneath every footstep you take. It influences and can support the immune systems of diverse animals and plants. Mushroom mycelium is the immune system of the mushroom life cycle, and we can tap into these immunologically active networks to potentially help our health. There is preliminary cutting-edge research showing that mushroom mycelium of turkey tail and agarikon, grown on grain, can support innate immunity. While this study is pending publication, the results are very exciting.

What might surprise our readers the most to learn about mushrooms?That about 90 percent of them have not yet been identified!

How do strangers react when you tell them what you do?
They used to avoid me and the subject. Now they’re excited to speak to me, from children to grandparents. Everywhere I go, people approach me with smiles, curiosity, respect—and often a wink!

What are some of the best mushrooms to include in your diet and why?
Foodwise: shiitake, maitake, oysters, enoki, porcini, truffles, and pine mushrooms. For support of immunity and cognitive health: turkey tail, agarikon, reishi, chaga, and lion’s mane.

Do you forage for mushrooms?
Yes! Every day as I walk. My favorites are pine mushrooms, hedgehogs, chanterelles, winter chanterelles, porcini, oysters, lobsters, and candy caps for culinary purposes; turkey tails and ganodermas for health supporting purposes; cyans and liberty caps for spiritual purposes.

But it is the wide range of colors, forms, and mysterious species that excite me. I don’t have to pick them to enjoy them.

One of the most common revelations for those new to this subject—often students of mycologists—is that they had no idea how diverse and beautiful mushrooms are, and that they’re everywhere. I often hear them question themselves: “How could I not have noticed them before?”

What advice can you share for other foragers?
Join a mycological society. See namyco.org for a national and international registry.

How do you stay enchanted?
Mushrooms and mycologists build bridges across cultures, religions, politics, and generations. They bring us together, and the excitement, the eureka moment, is a shared experience in wonder, delight, science, and comradery. Mushrooms, particularly psilocybin mushrooms, make us nicer people—and smarter too!

When you say that “mushrooms and mycologists build bridges across cultures, religions, politics and generations,” what do you mean? Throughout the world, people have discovered mushrooms, and through trial and error, they have come to know which mushrooms are safe to consume and which ones are not. Moreover, many polypore mushrooms like turkey tails have been used for enhancing health by making teas or used, as in the case of some Native Americans, as a chewing gum for dental health.

When people from one region of the world travel to new lands, they bring that cultural myco-knowledge with them. A good example is the popularity of the pine mushroom, a.k.a. matsutake. In the 1970s, few Americans of European descent consumed these mushrooms.

I joined a mycological society around 1975, and our Japanese members brought these mushrooms to our attention. They relished in the fact we had not awakened to them in the Pacific Northwest, as competition for finding them in Japan was fierce, and indeed a “national sport.” The French and Italian cultures helped bring our attention to boletus (ceps, porcini). From Mesoamerica to Russia to South Africa, many cultures have deep love for mushrooms. These are just a few examples of mushrooms bridging cultures across continents. As humans migrate, mycological knowledge is shared and spread.

To learn more about Stamets’s work, visit fungi.com, hostdefense.com, instagram.com/paulstamets, facebook.com/paulstamets, youtube.com/paulstamets, and listen to his TED and TEDMed talks on YouTube.

Note: The statements made throughout this article have not been evaluated by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.

Featured Image:
From the British Library archive / Bridgeman Images
The Night-Blowing Cereus (1807), by Robert Dunkarton

When we saw that New York Times best-selling writer Leigh Ann Henion had a new book coming out this fall about nighttime and all its hidden, glorious enchantments—enchantments fit for an autumn faerie queen, no less, who might even reign in our own backyards—we knew we had to ask her more about it. Night Magic is a celebration of the dark and what goes on in it, “from blooming moon gardens to nocturnal salamanders, from glowing foxfire [to] synchronous fireflies that blink in unison like an orchestra of light.” She forgot long-haired autumnal faerie queens consorting in the deep wood with bats and moths and the occasional deep-forest cake made from black velvet, mushrooms, and moss … but yes, please! We had the following exchange by email and the occasional carrier bat and hawk moth.

Enchanted Living: Can you tell us why you wrote a book called Night Magic? What did you hope to make people see about the night specifically that’s magical?

Leigh Ann Henion: The idea for this book was delivered on firefly wings. After I wrote a magazine article about synchronous fireflies, many readers reached out to let me know that they’d started turning off their porch lights more often. I was amazed that my story had inspired real-world action that led to reduced light pollution, which is a threat to fireflies and a lot of other beings. I was inspired to spend the next few years in the company of owls, moths, salamanders, and other nocturnal creatures to explore natural darkness in an age of increasing artificial light. As I say in the book, I think a loss of habitat leads to a loss of magic—and night is a habitat that’s often underappreciated.

We’ve somehow come to think of it as less important than periods of daylight. But darkness is crucial for life on Earth, and I’ve tried to help recenter darkness— not only as important for the survival of wildlife and ecosystems but also as a valuable part of the human experience.

EL: How might you advise our readers to approach the natural world at night? How should they start to look differently at what inhabits it?

LAH: Experiencing night can sometimes simply mean turning off your own porch lights to sit quietly in observation. It’s increasingly rare to be without some light source—a phone screen or a flashlight, for example. Even when you set out to pointedly experience darkness, it can be hard to find pockets of it. But even in areas of high light pollution, we can often find ways to create tiny pockets of darkness in our own yards, neighborhoods, and communities.

Regionally, there are often unique ways to engage with night. On the West Coast, there are social media groups for people to report bioluminescent waves in the Pacific so that others might catch sight of them. In other regions, there are festivals that celebrate bats and moths to give people a chance to appreciate oft-elusive nocturnal animals. For people nervous about exploring darkness, it can be helpful to find parks and outdoor centers that offer guided night walks to become more comfortable with wandering at night.

EL: Once we create and become accustomed to pockets of dark, what might we look for then?

LAH: I think at first it’s best not to look for anything! Just allow yourself to rest in a space of reduced energy. We tend to catch motion out of the corner of our eyes at night. So it’s helpful to be mindful of that. And to see the glow of foxfire, it’s best to move slowly if you’re taking a night hike. If you find a rich pocket of darkness, you can even just sit still. If you engage with all your senses, unexpected things will likely be revealed.

EL: What are some of the more enchanted creatures and special flora you’ve encountered that flourish in the night?

LAH: If I had to choose one species in Night Magic that seems particularly enchanted, I’d probably settle on blue ghost fireflies. They’re found in various parts of Appalachia, where I live, and I know some extremely stoic people who have been brought to tears by their first sighting of the species. They’re like nothing else I’ve ever seen. Blue ghosts appear neon blue, and they don’t blink like many common species. They stay lit for a long time, so you can track their blue-streaking movements through the forests where they reside. They’re as close to fairies as anything I’ve ever seen. I’ve heard people say that they evoke stories of will-o’-the-wisps, the atmospheric ghost lights of folklore. I think it’s almost impossible to witness a large group of them without being moved by the sheer wonder of the experience.

EL: The theme of this issue is Autumn Queens, and a central idea is an image of a faerie queen, perhaps a bit older than Titania in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. She’s in an autumn forest at night, surrounded by moths and bats and all that autumnal abundance, under a full hunter’s moon … I wonder if you might fill out that image with what you know of nighttime and autumn and magic.

LAH: In autumn, trees pull nutrients from leaves back into their cores to fortify for winter. Animals burrow. I start yearning for tea and blankets and hearth fires. It’s all part of a natural cycle. And longer nights are key in the shift. I’ve always understood that the gorgeous reds and yellows of autumnal leaves had something to do with cooling temperatures, but until researching Night Magic, I had never realized that longer nights play a role in telling photosensitive trees that it’s time to start their process of retreat. Now that I do, it’s hard not to think of the shortening days as a precursor to that arboreal magic. The varied colors of fall are made possible by gathering darkness. It’s fantastic!

And even though fireflies are associated with summer, one of the most amazing things I learned about fireflies early in my research is that they live underground for years before they rise with their own light. We see them only toward the very end of their lives. But in the stages when they’re underground, they continue to glow. So even when I can’t see them in the depths of fall and winter, I now know that I’m still surrounded by their living light. And bioluminescent foxfire—the glow of mushrooms that makes fallen branches look like magic wands—often peaks when cooler temperatures arrive.

Fall eases us into the periods of darkness that are required for us to thrive, just like fireflies. When I started to think of darkness as a place that fosters abundant life, it became easier to loosen my grip on summer and welcome fall as a place of respite.

EL: In your section on autumn, you talk about night-blooming flowers (including the night-blooming cereus), and the bird-size hawk moths that pollinate (some of) them. Can you talk more about these blooms and their seductive powers?

LAH: Before I started contemplating Night Magic, I’d never considered that just as butterflies have whole landscapes of flowers, moths have entire nocturnal ones. Once I realized this, it seemed ridiculously obvious. Still, I’d always overlooked it! There are plenty of books about tending butterfly gardens, yet not all that many talk about moth gardens. Where I live, common primrose is a favorite of hawk moths, which are the size of hummingbirds. And a lot of moth species have favorite plants they depend on as caterpillars.

Persimmon trees, for example, are favorites of luna moths. In certain regions, when you plant native persimmon trees, you’re basically summoning luna moths, clear as a siren call! A lot of night bloomers are nondescript in daylight, but they come alive at night, often blooming rapidly enough that watching is like observing a flower bloom over time-lapse, only you can see them unfurl in real time within minutes. It’s glorious! Night bloomers tend to have strong scents, calling to the giant, gorgeous moths they’ve co-evolved with. Realizing that planting certain species or letting wildflowers grow feral plays a role in where moths congregate—that is a powerful reminder that we’re often in conversation with nocturnal wildlife without realizing it.

EL: The way you describe in your book the giant moths that congregate around moonflowers sounds almost terrifying. When I first saw a luna moth and didn’t know what it was, I admit to being equal parts scared and awestruck. Did you have a response like that to the moths or any of the other creatures you’ve encountered?

LAH: I was in awe of those moths, but I suppose awe can be a mingling of wonder and terror! Of all the creatures I encountered, I think bats made me the most nervous, especially in the beginning. Spending time with biologists and finding ways to have responsible interactions with bats ultimately helped me appreciate them in new ways. Bats, like moths, can be disrupted by the presence of artificial light, which is where humans often encounter them. But in darkness, when they are given the space to do their own thing, encountering them can be marvelous.

EL: How do you feel now when you take a nighttime walk in the wood? What do you see that you didn’t before?

LAH: Before I wrote Night Magic, I had never really walked around at night without light sources for sustained periods of time. When I started exploring after dark, I was surprisingly nervous. Now that I’ve acclimated to some degree, I feel a sense of serenity in the dark. I have had experiences that have helped me understand that sometimes darkness can be an avenue of escape. That’s been very empowering. Now that I am more comfortable with darkness, I can seek shelter in shadows. They aren’t just the domain of potentially frightening things; they’re part of my own natural habitat. And I’m alert to wonders now, whereas before, when I sequestered myself indoors after dusk, I didn’t see or hear or feel much about the night world at all.

EL: Has researching and writing this book changed your life?

LAH: Absolutely. I have come to understand that before exploring night, I only half-knew my own yard and neighborhood. Embracing darkness has literally expanded my world.

EL: Do the moon and stars tie into the magic of the night flora and fauna you’ve encountered?

LAH: When people talk about the wonders of night, they often focus on the moon and stars. But there are living marvels all around us after sunset—and those creatures have their own fantastic relationships to the cosmos. Birds use celestial clues to navigate. It’s thought that carnivorous glowworms—which look like stars scattered on the ground—might be mimicking stars to lure other insects into their silken webs. Large mammals are often more mobile during nights of high illumination. Artificial light tends to be monotone—a complete nocturnal washout—but natural darkness ebbs and flows with reflective moonlight, and those tides have a beauty all their own.

EL: Is there anything more that you hope to share with readers about your book?

LAH: In the process of working on this book, I was often so wowed by discoveries that I had the impulse to reach out to friends immediately because I couldn’t wait to share. As readers ramble through night seasons with me, I hope that at least once they’ll come across something that makes them think, What? I’ve got to tell someone about this!

EL: What natural wonders will you be turning to next?

LAH: A few days ago, I was making breakfast when I saw a giant white bird in a tree downhill from my house. I mean, it was big. I’d just woken up, so it was almost as if I’d dreamed it. When I got a closer look, I couldn’t believe it. They’re not usually spotted on the mountain where I live, but it was a great egret. I’m used to seeing blue herons—and great egrets look very similar in stature—but there was no doubt that this was a bird I’d never seen before. I was in awe even before it took off, with a wingspan that seemed as wide as my arms outstretched. All this to say, I’m not sure what I’ll be turning to next, but I’m trying to stay alert to the natural wonders that turn up unexpectedly!

EL: Can you talk about how you stay enchanted in your everyday life?

LAH: I stay enchanted by trying as much as I can to follow my curiosity. I think enchantment requires an openness to mystery. Years ago, I thought that learning too much about something might erase some of its charm, but the older I get, the more I believe that learning about the nuances of starlight or glowworms or night-blooming flowers leads only to more magic, because when you find answers, they generate more questions. And the more you learn about what humans have discovered, the more you realize how much we still don’t know. To me, staying enchanted means continually chasing and embracing the unknown.

EL: Finally, how often did you think of fairies and other magical creatures as you explored the world at night?

LAH: There has been some limited research that indicates that spending time in natural darkness—with limited point- source illumination—has the capacity to expand humans’ imaginations. One study found that people were more likely to turn to supernatural explanations when answering questions in low-light situations. I think that’s fascinating. When the barrage of the modern world is lessened, it might give us the capacity to think more figuratively, as our ancestors did, pre-electricity. It’s amazing to think that exploring the night world might make us more open to imagining beyond the mundane, and I was often reminded of mythology and folklore and fairy tales in the field. I’ve spent years wandering around with blue ghost fireflies, among flowers that bloom at dusk, and forests full of fungi that glows on the ground like the star stickers that once covered the ceiling of my childhood bedroom. At this point, it’s hard to think of the entire night world as it exists just beyond my backdoor as anything short of magical.

This autumn, find Night Magic, published by Algonquin Books, wherever books are sold. Learn more about Leigh Ann Henion at leighannhenion.com.

Photography by Ronald L. Sowers

Baskets exist to store, to carry, to hold. Sometimes they contain day-to-day, imminently practical objects; sometimes they capture what’s far more elusive: thoughts, memories, joys, even a touch of melancholy. The basket may well hold the essence of its weaver or some wildness and wisdom from the spirit of the tree from which it came. Perhaps on occasion, a heartfelt incantation has been woven into a basket’s undulating rows of pine and sinew. It’s even possible that a slender ray of moonlight can become trapped within its tangles and never quite escape, even with the rising of the sun.

Pamela Zimmerman’s creations transcend into the mysteriously sublime. In her “Catching the Moon” series, Teneriffe lace is woven into webs atop soulful faces peering out from below. One might ask if it’s they who caught the moon, or if the moon entranced and ultimately caught them.

Kambriel: When were you first drawn to the ancient yet constantly evolving craft of basket weaving?
Pamela Zimmerman: I’ve always loved baskets and have especially been drawn to Native-style baskets, particularly coiled ones. Living and working in northern Arizona as a National Park ranger before I ever made a basket, I studied and bought Native American baskets and wished I could make something like them.

K: How has being based in North Carolina—with its long, rich tradition of basket weaving and roots in Cherokee, Gullah, and European cultures—inspired your work?
PZ: I love all forms of indigenous baskets from around the world. They are constantly inspiring. I’ve lived here for over thirty years, and North Carolina’s influence has really been in the availability of materials: There is so much that grows well here—longleaf pine needles, which I have used extensively, and also the fabulous array of weedy things people don’t want that are easy to find in abundance, like vines (honeysuckle, Virginia creeper, wisteria, kudzu, English ivy), yucca, and dandelions. Free and available materials have always been essential to the basket maker, who uses what they have; this is the tradition of all Native people’s basketry.

K: Did this diverse array of cultures have a special impact or provide inspiration for your own particular style or techniques?
PZ: I’ve been inspired to see how the cultures that came before made baskets with what they had access to. It is something I have pondered and preached throughout my time as a basket maker and teacher. Most tribes altered their basketry forms, sometimes quite dramatically, to appeal to Europeans when this continent was invaded by white men. Many things we consider typical of a certain tribe were adopted as “traditional” forms by that tribe in recent historical memory. I can give many examples: the Coushatta pine-needle baskets, as well as the Tohono O’odham coiled-yucca and devil’s-claw baskets. Even the Cherokee have begun to make pine-needle baskets, though there is no record of pine-needle baskets existing in that culture until relatively recently. The whole Gullah basket tradition is driven by the historic atrocity of cultural displacement by slavery. They combined their skills from Africa with what they could find in the New World to make what they needed and generated a whole new heritage. All these cultures have influenced me in that they are taking what they have and making what they need, whether it be to have something to sell or to winnow grain.

K: At what point did you feel yourself coming into your own, experimenting beyond traditional basketry toward the realm of personal creative expression?
PZ: I’ve experimented from the very beginning in my basketry journey. I learned my first technique, coiling, from Judy Mallow’s From Forest Floor to Finished Project, but I struck out and did things my own way, the way they worked for me. Coiling lends itself very well to ad lib. It’s the easiest basketry technique, in my opinion, because it has only two active elements. After coiling alone for several years, I found the North Carolina Basketmakers Association and started going to their annual convention, where I took and taught my first classes. I selected classes for the techniques they contained as opposed to the basket we were weaving, for the sole purpose of adding techniques to my repertoire.

It took a long time to think I had come into my own. One curator said, “If you can do this”—a finely woven piece— “why in the world would you want to do that?”—a rustic weaving. One artist told me that if I did not make one style recognizably mine, I would always appear as a student. The implication is that the process of exploration and discovery is only for those who are unlearned. That is sad as well as wrong. Look at great creators in history who did not focus: Leonardo, Picasso, Michelangelo. They were not criticized for dabbling in too many media.

Why was it wrong for me to explore as many directions as I wished? I finally resolved this question within myself. People want relationships between things when they are presented together. I generally explore a new idea at least three times before I am ready to move on, though often the first rendering remains my favorite. So I give the appearance of focus while my creativity remains at large, actively seeking new, challenging, exciting avenues of applying my store of techniques I collect along the way. Why is this important? I have learned another secret. I always heard of people hitting creative walls, running out
of ideas. I could never comprehend this. It doesn’t seem possible for me to not have an idea or something to work on. The secret lies in the fact that I have not focused. When you choose to work only in one direction, when the project is finished, of course there is nothing else to do. I freely explore whatever comes to my fancy. I am an artist because I must be; curiosity and creativity is a compulsion. If I cannot have fiber, it will be expressed another way: in the teaching of my children, making my unconventional dinner, or watercolor. It will emerge, nonetheless. I am here and have come into my own.

K: Basketry can strike a perfect balance between the utilitarian and artistic. Is striking such a balance a goal in your own pieces?
PZ: Utility is important only when I am making a particular thing I need. The rest of the time it is all art. I imagine early man, painting on a cave wall. The woman was over here figuring out how to weave a sandal from a yucca plant or something. He’s over there, indulging himself in something purely decorative, making handprints on the wall or documenting his fabulous hunt: the beginning of painting art. She is figuring out how to make something out of what she has found, something to make life easier: the beginning of fiber art. Eventually, she
will also make it beautiful, but there is so much to figure out about making it work first. Painting has always been decorative. Fiber was about making something you needed. Both of these transcend and become art when creativity is employed and whatever is made evokes emotion. Whatever the medium, art is accomplished when the mundane is transformed into the thought provoker.

I consider myself a fiber artist and prefer to work in a sculptural context. Once a year, my family takes a vacation on a remote rural property, where I try to weave with what I can find in the woods: twigs, barks, vines, grasses. At these times, I sometimes try to make useful baskets. It feels like I’m an ancient Native woman when I sit in the creek and weave with my children playing nearby. I often feel like I am the first basket maker, trying to figure out how to make a vessel with what I have around me. It’s a wonderful, primal experience and never fails to enrich my perspective as an artist.

K: You created a series entitled “Catching the Moon.” Does the moon hold special significance for you?
PZ: The “Catching the Moon” series was an outgrowth of my face baskets, the first of which was a gift for one of my children’s teachers. It was very emotional, putting that face in the basket. I’m still trying to figure it out. Faces attract us. The faces draw people in who would not otherwise look at a woven piece. I have been told by some other artists that faces are wrong in baskets. As far as I’m concerned, that is as good a reason as any to keep making them! But many of my weaving ideas come in the middle of the night, and that is how the “Catching the Moon” series started, when one of my children was not sleeping well. Lots of nights. Lots of moons. Even after he started sleeping better, there were more moons. They all had something different to say. The middle of the night is like that.

K: As this issue’s theme is “Winter Witch,” whatdo you personally consider to be some of the most magical and meaningful aspects of the winter season?
PZ: Winter is the time when we contemplate endings. It seems everything is ending and yet, it does not. The leaves come back. The birds return. Baby animals are born. All of that is magical. The older I get, the harder it is not to revisit the comparisons of life to the seasons of the year. I am in winter now, and it is good.

K: Do you find yourself weaving any particular thoughts, feelings, or wishes into the baskets?
PZ: But of course! The feel of a finished work is imbued with emotion and contemplative energy. When I make a moon piece, I contemplate the feeling I want it to exude. I often see my entire life as a woven work, all the different threads connecting me to the world around me. Maybe every artist sees their work as an outgrowth of how they envision their world relationship, but this is very strong for me. I feel as if I’m weaving all day long, even when there’s not a fiber piece in my hands.

K: The porcelain faces you crafted to look out from beneath the intricately woven Teneriffes on these pieces often have a timeworn, chipped, and weathered appearance. I feel this gives them a greater sense of history and depth of individual personality, not to mention a wonderfully crone-like charm! Did you specifically want to avoid making them look too refined and smooth, too perfectly symmetrical, too conventionally pretty?
PZ: Thank you! Yes, I tend not to like things that are “perfect.” When I first started weaving, I wanted to make a perfectly shaped basket, and I tried for a long time. It was part of my learning process. Eventually I realized that nothing is perfect and that sometimes it’s better to celebrate the difference than to try to make things exactly a certain way. To me, the whole purpose of weaving is exploration. There are very few rules: Don’t get hurt. Don’t eat it. Try not to stain the furniture and walls. Other than that, I do what I want with the fiber, not what I’ve been shown to do with it. I tell my students, “This is not skydiving—it is art. The worst that can happen is the weaving will be ugly. Why not take risks, and plenty of them? The payoff far outweighs the penalties.”

We want to tell you about a novel from author Cyla Panin—Beguiled, that came out last summer and can be found at all book retailers!

Here’s the gorgeous cover (by artist Colin Verdi and designer Deena Fleming):

And a synopsis:

Ella is a 17-year-old weaver whose entire livelihood depends on her loom. She dreams of opening her own shop, but when her father died in debtor’s prison, she had to support herself by taking whatever clients she could get. In order to buy her supplies she goes into debt of her own, and when her loom breaks, Ella realizes she needs more help than a repairperson can give her. She, like everyone, has heard about the old washerwoman spirit called the Bean-Nighe who will grant any one wish—for a price.

But Ella is desperate, so she asks the Bean-Nighe to fix her loom. And it works. The loom is fixed, and she creates beautiful pieces she could have never imagined before. All she has to do is feed the loom a drop of blood each time she weaves—a small price to pay for such magnificent silks. And when she brings two bolts to a rich client, she meets a mysterious young man named Callum and bargains for an invitation to his exclusive party. At that party, he’s so mesmerized by her talent, he offers Ella a place to live and patronage for her art. It seems like Ella’s fortune is finally turning for the better . . . until she begins to notice the loom taking more from her than she offered.

As she becomes entangled in the lives of the city’s rich, swept into Callum’s allure, and trapped by the Bean-Nighe’s magic, Ella must figure out a way to secure her future while she still has a future at all.

Here’s a painting of Ella by @winterofherdiscontent.

We asked Cyla a few questions:

What was your inspiration for writing Beguiled?
I love mythology, and have been drawn to Scotland for a long time. It’s where I’d love to have a little cottage in the woods! On a trip there three years ago, I decided the next manuscript I wrote would be set in a mythical version of Edinburgh. From there, I started with an idea for a retelling of Sleeping Beauty, but instead of a spindle I wanted to give my main character a loom. Honestly, Beguiled became its own story, so I wouldn’t call it a retelling or re-imagining of Sleeping Beauty but it’s definitely rooted in folklore and fairy tales.

Why fantasy?
I love being able to basically live in my daydreams for a bit! I’ve always been drawn to fantasy—books, movies, etc.—and being able to write my own worlds now is a dream come true. There’s just this sense of freedom when writing fantasy—like you’re only limited by your imagination.

What do you hope readers will take away from the story?
I hope readers will take away the value of finding self-worth from the inside, instead of looking for validation from outside sources. I also hope readers will enjoy their time in what I hope is an enchanting world!

What was your favorite bit of research you ended up not using?
I absolutely love Ian Mortimer’s Time Traveller’s Guide series for research, and one thing that stood out is that someone in Early-Modern Scotland would have never heard anything louder than a church bell. It’s obvious if you think about it, but I hadn’t really ever considered that before—how quiet their world would have been.

And that’s the lovely author, who seems to have stepped from a fairy tale herself. Her debut novel, Stalking Shadows, was called “both beautiful and brutal” by Kirkus Reviews.

Imagine living in a Gothic church turned home! When we read about a family—Anastasiia, Gunther, and their three children—in Maryland doing just that, our dark hearts trembled with love and jealousy. Now we dream of the light from stained-glass arches falling upon our cheeks as we sleep, the vaulted ceilings soaring above us as we rise to edit new issues of Enchanted Living.

Below we attempt to live vicariously by asking Anastasiia all about this glamorous living situation of our dreams.

Follow All Saints House on Instagram @allsaintshouse.

Enchanted Living: Can you tell us the story of how your family came to live in a Gothic Revival church?

Anastasiia: Well, we have always loved the idea of purchasing an old home, one with an abundance of history, unique character features, and enough projects to keep us busy for a while. This church in particular was a mysterious old building overrun with vines, down the road from our little farmhouse. We drove past it every day, dreaming of what it might look like inside. After seeing it listed for sale once in 2013, we inquired with the seller’s agent but never heard back and assumed it must have been sold relatively quickly. Years went by and we passed it every day, but then in January 2017 we noticed an Open House sign in front. We slammed on the brakes and quickly pulled into the driveway. This was an opportunity we couldn’t pass up!

It was just like love at first sight—hard to pinpoint what exactly made our hearts skip a bit, but they surely did. I think it was the grandeur of the space among many other things, like beautiful woodwork, colorful light streaming through the original stained glass, Gothic arches of windows and doors, and just the overall feeling that it’s meant to be ours. Gunther and I both did not see an old moldy building in dire need of repairs and some deep cleaning, but what it could be—a beautiful, unique home. I don’t think I’ll ever forget the moment when we looked at each other, standing in the great room, unable to say a word, overwhelmed by the shared feeling of an absolute desire to call this place our home.

EL: What is your favorite part of your unique living situation?

A: It’s the unique architecture of the place and its location. Old buildings were created with a lot of considerations, including their position relative to the sun and the aesthetic both inside and out. There is not a single angle or sight line in this house that isn’t pleasing to the eye, and it really is like living inside a work of art! And after living here for years, I am still frequently startled by a not previously discovered view of the house. In addition, All Saints House is surrounded by beautiful woods and a stream that is the headwaters to a regional river; it is just like living in a park. After growing up in an apartment in a city, being able to take a few steps out the door and end up surrounded by nature is its own sort of magic.

EL: What have you learned about the history of the church?

A: We’ve been able to piece together quite a bit of its history. All Saints Church was established when George R. Goldsborough donated thirty-five acres of  the Mill Farm to the local diocese  for the purpose of building a church. The first structure was built in 1870 and burned to the ground on the New Year’s Eve of 1899. Then a second building was erected, similar in style to the original, on the remaining brick foundation. The original thirty-five acres also included a rectory that burned in 1945, a parish house, barn, mill, and sexton’s lodge. Today only the church building remains on the site. After deconsecration and conversion to a home in the 1980s, the church saw three different owners before ending up in our hands in 2017.

EL: Do you have any thoughts about the Gothic style?

A: To be honest, I don’t think I ever pondered Gothic style before we purchased our house. Not in architecture, nor in art or fashion. But after living here for five years, I can see why architects keep coming back to this iconic style of vaulted ceilings, stained-glass windows, and pointed arches. Perhaps it’s because of the grandeur reminiscent of medieval architecture, as well as expressive elegance and captivating symmetry that is so enchanting.

EL: What are the challenges of making living spaces in such a large structure without the sort of rooms one would find in most residential properties?

A: The most challenging part was—and remains—creating functional spaces. We love the open spacious rooms, but they are not best suited for family living, pushing one to explore various options for creating designated living spaces. Thankfully, all the room configurations had been well thought out and executed by one of the previous owners before we purchased the house.

EL: Did you make a conscious decision to keep as many authentic elements as possible? Were there any that had to be sacrificed to adapt the structure from chapel to home?

A: Our goal is to preserve every original feature that we can while making this beautiful building a functional home for our family. We absolutely love the untouched woodwork throughout the house and are eternally grateful that no one ever painted it. In the great room, the wainscoting still keeps silhouettes of the old church pews that were attached to the walls—little ghosts of the past!

Stained-glass windows, though they require a fair amount of TLC, are so incredible that I do not see us ever removing them.

Among the things that were necessarily sacrificed to the conversion are the original church pews, although some of them were used for closet shelving, and so remain here. Like the door hardware, which has been plundered in the years since deconsecration, the rest of the pews are lost, and while this is incredibly disappointing, I hope to find an original All Saints Church pew someday at a local antique store.

EL: What is your favorite season to observe from inside the home? What about time of day? I’d guess the morning light is incredible!

A: Every season and any weather! Every time seasons change I am completely astounded by the beauty of this place. I love watching the light move through the house as the day goes by—greeting me with a sunrise in the kitchen, shining with golden hues in the library in the late morning, brightening up the altar room during early afternoon hours, and soaking the great room in golden glow in the late afternoon. I do not think a day goes by when I am not inspired by the incredible beauty of this house. And the number of times I have to drop everything to get a photo? It happens a dozen times a day!

EL: Do you have any advice to readers considering diving into similar projects?

A: We are in no way experts in the topic, but we would say that living in a space before making any major changes is a must. While it can certainly be said about any house, it is essential for one that really lacks the functionality of a regular residential building. It takes time to find the most efficient and enjoyable configuration of rooms and furniture. It took us a few years to  find what works best for us in the house layout, and even then, we still move things around from time to time to accommodate changes in our lifestyle as our children are getting older. To own a place like this one, one’s heart must be truly in it. Projects like these rarely make sense on paper, so it is nearly always done out of love. So for us, All Saints House is a project with no end in sight. We are not doing it for a promise of profit but rather for a chance to love a place we call home, to make it our own, to bring it back to life, and to grow old here.

EL: And finally, how do you stay enchanted?

A: It would be hard not to when living in such an enchanting place! From the moment I stepped foot in here, I could not stop admiring every single detail of it, dreaming of its history, the people who built it with their own hands (one of the chief builders is buried in the adjoining cemetery), the people who lived here before us, and the people who came here every Sunday a hundred years ago. I think there is something absolutely magical about being a part of this building’s history, part of its long journey from an active church to a well-loved family home. One day we too will become “the people who once lived here,” another page in the long history of the All Saints House.

Our friend John Keske, who now runs Deep Midnight Perfumes in the wake of his partner Cat Marx’s passing (you can read our past interviews with her here) has some new scents to share, and we asked him all about it below:

What do you associate with autumn?
Autumn is my favorite time of year. When the air becomes crisp and cool is when I come alive—taking walks or drives to look at fall leaves, taking a trip to Duluth or Grand Marais to enjoy the north shore of Lake Superior to enjoy the change in season, even just braving the Twin Cities weather without a jacket for as long as possible. This is also the perfect time to cook fall comfort food like soup, roasted squash, anything that would go on a Thanksgiving table. Watching cult Halloween movies like Sleepy Hollow or binging Lord of the Rings also feels like fall to me. I have strong memories of doing things with my grandparents in the fall. Picking peaches from their tree so tall we had to climb onto the roof to get them all, freezing vegetables from the garden (an all day affair), holiday dinners, and much more.
 
What does autumn smell like to you? And how do you create scents around that?
Scent memory is such a huge inspiration for Deep Midnight Perfumes. It is the reason we started the shop creating scents the way we did—associating a scent with a story. Autumn smells like changing winds with crisp and dry air and loamy earth; dried leaves and spices; bonfires and baked goods; apples and pumpkins; sweet candy and fruits, and many other things. I try to create scents that remind me of those things and make me remember favorite fall memories.
 
Can you tell us about some of your favorite scents you’ve created lately, and have any past favorites changed?
From the Eight Bouquets set I made in the Spring, my favorites are Tupelo Honey and True Love’s Crystal. From the Women of the Weird set I just made for fall, my favorites are Margot the Darkness and Agnes the Shadow. Not only are the scents my favorites, but they are actually the names of characters Cat played in one of our D&D games several years ago. It was a delightfully weird game where we each played a random castle guard until a monster dispatched us, and then we were another random guard. Half the fun was coming up with grandiose names.
 
Lately, I have been reminded that Black Wings was an old favorite I recently came to appreciate again. I have also really been a fan of Fezziwig’s Tea. It’s a really crisp, underrated scent. I have also really been appreciating Firefly Valley. Cat made it for me based on a time we went walking through a wooded valley and suddenly found we were surrounded by hundreds of tiny frogs the size of a thumbnail. The name is a stretch, but it was better than putting frogs in the name.
 
Do you have any witch inspired scents? 
Absolutely! Driaxus Black, Winter Queen, Griselda’s Garden, the What’s Up Witches sample set… the list goes on. Anything supernatural, fey, fantastical, and weird is definitely in our purview, and witchy things are no exception.
 
How do you stay weird? 
Solitude. Being alone (at least for a time) is the best way to find yourself. Refusing to not be myself by refusing to try to fit in. Talking to myself, believe it or not. I thought it was a bad habit, but it is actually an acknowledgement of your inner self, and a fantastic way to work through problems. Talking to people who are gone, in one way or another. It offers your mind a chance to find a different perspective by imagining a conversation with someone who is not you, putting yourself in their shoes. Pacing—literally pacing. It gets you out of your chair and gives your mind a break. Having one too many cats. I also do a lot of nerdy things, like playing games and making perfume!

See more at deepmidnightperfumes.com

Photography by pleasant art

Article from the Mermaid Issue #59
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It feels like fate that Dame Darcy—equal parts mermaid and witch, a longtime artist, filmmaker, writer, tarot designer, musician, and haunted-doll-whisperer—should find herself at home in Savannah, Georgia. Savannah, like Darcy, exists in a place between the land and the sea, between the living and the dead, where your neighbors might be ghosts, where the saltwater-tinged air hangs with a sultry floral perfume of flowers that may or may not be poisonous, where shimmering veils of water dance upon ornate fountains and centuries-old grand oak trees exude their tattered grace, draped with heavy gray-green plumes of Spanish moss, swaying gently on the evening breeze.

Kambriel: Having lived in many different parts of the country, including Idaho and New York City, what ultimately drew you to Savannah?
Dame Darcy: There was a day when I was in my apartment in Chinatown in New York City, looking up Ludlow Street toward the Empire State Building. I got a vision of a place that looked tropical and had big tall palms, but Colonial-style architecture, and pirate treasure buried on an island in a waterway.

I didn’t know where this mermaid paradise place was, but I knew I was being led there by the Goddess and would find my treasure there, in all senses of the word. With this new revelation, I began searching for a more cottagecore-type option to buy a house, grow a garden, and live a more sustainable off-the-grid lifestyle like how I’d grown up. I looked at Trinidad, Uruguay, Argentina, Mexico, the Canary Islands, Jamaica, Brazil—then my friends had a wedding in Savannah and it looked just like my vision.

The spirit of Savannah draws its own to itself. Savannah kept whispering to me, and I’d forgotten her name from another lifetime. She was born in the 1700s, after all, and is very old for America. By living here, I’ve been able to live with low overhead and put my savings back into my online business and grow it to the point where I could buy a home—an adorable coral pink and sea-foam green Florida-style bungalow with lots of tropical plants on a street named after a tropical flower. I share it with my fiancé, Pleasant, who I found here in Savannah. The spirit of Savannah is like a beautiful black lady all dressed up in her Antebellum finery ready to go to the cotillion, except her dress is a little ripped and dirty, dripping with Spanish moss. When she lifts up her skirt to dance, hundreds of feral cats and palmetto bugs scurry out from under the ripped lace.

K: I can see you commandeering a pirate ship in centuries past, if not next week! What are some things about the nautical world you feel an affinity with?
DD: The best pirate tale, and the life I aspire to, is The Count of Monte Cristo. Put in prison wrongfully by people with more privilege who were jealous of him, the Count got out and found the pirate treasure and showed them that “living well be the best revenge! Yarrr!” As a kid I read Treasure Island, Moby Dick, Swiss Family Robinson, Pippi in the South Seas, Robinson Crusoe, Peter Pan, Slocum’s book Sailing Alone Around the World, and anything else I could find to live in that pirate fantasy. I knew as soon as my stint in Idaho was up, I would live in port towns the rest of my life and go to sea when I wanted, and never be forced to be with landlubbers again. My mom is originally from Pasadena, so she took us to see her family and go to the beach in Los Angeles and San Clemente. I loved surfing and swimming in the ocean spray, and watching the sunset over the water. It got into my heart. When she took us to Disneyland and we went on the Pirates of the Caribbean ride, I wanted to just live there. I knew it was an installation made to look like somewhere, but I didn’t know where. So I started my search to find it.

Captain Cook buried his treasure on one of the sixteen barrier islands near Savannah on the Intracoastal Waterway, and I’m going to get the gold. The lure of actual pirate gold is indescribable to landlubbers. It’s not even about the money. It’s like a haunting ghost that calls you constantly, and maybe the lure is the shine of hope—that something is always out there waiting for you to find it.

As soon as I moved here, I started crewing and living on boats on Hilton Head Island and began getting to know the Intracoastal Waterway. I went to sea school on Hilton Head Island to get a captain’s license—I learned some celestial navigation, how to determine drift on charts, and the locations of the islands here where the vision showed me where the gold is. Longitude, latitude, the rules of sailing, wind, knot tying, and all kinds of other nautical stuff. During this time I also wrote the script I’m basing the next Meat Cake graphic novel on, entitled Meat Cake, the Voyage of Temptress. It’s a pirate adventure that takes place on the H.M.S. Temptress, and also a time-travel tale with witches and mermaids.

K: You’ve created several tarot decks with various themes—Mermaid, Witchy Cat, Queen Alice. How were you first introduced to tarot reading?
DD: My introduction to tarot was through Mom. She was probably only in her early twenties at the time—a vision of her reading the Rider-Waite-Smith deck for her friends on a round table in front of a crackling fire on New Year’s night is one of my cherished first memories, at age five. Her long hair hung like a veil as she placed the cards in a pattern. The colorful holiday lights were strung around the room and reflections of the shadows glittered off the icicles hanging outside the window as she told her friend’s future. The room felt cozy and mystical at the same time and left an impression of enchantment on me. From then on, I was hooked for a lifetime on tarot reading.

I drew all three sets with the intent of finding other enthusiasts and magic people who love the Rider-Waite-Smith as much as I do. My partner Pleasant did the graphic design and packaging of the cards, and I illustrated and painted them. Now our new Musings and Meanings tarot book and journal to go with all Rider- Waite-Smith-based decks has been released at damedarcy.com! We both picked out the color palettes for everything, so this was very much a collaborative effort.

The oldest, Mermaid Tarot, was inspired by the nautical world we love and live in, here in subtropical Savannah. With mermaids, sailors, pirates, and sea life, I wanted to create an LGBTQ deck based on Rider-Waite-Smith that represented all races. The color palette is my favorite—sea-glass green, aquamarine, gold, sand, with a border that looks like a tan, weathered pirate map, navy blue and red accents. She’s still our most popular deck ten years later, and I can’t tell if it’s because she has been circulating the longest or because divining with the Mermaid Tarot is like a deep dive into a mermaid’s soul. It has meant so much to be in touch with other mermaids and tarot readers through this deck. I feel she has the most bubbly, light, and playful vibe of all the decks.

K: In addition to visual arts, you’re also a musician whose music captures a certain haunting charm from the days of yore. Your sea shanties, and their narrative style, really suit your natural penchant for storytelling.
DD: Sea shanties are part of my family legacy, but I usually felt alone in my passion for them. I was glad they trended, so finally someone understands what kind of music I perform. My dad was in the navy and taught me to play sea shanties on the banjo when I was a kid. My first sea shanty was “Greenland Fisheries,” and the story of the tragedy of the whale hunt led me into a world I couldn’t get enough of.

I like how hardcore sea shanties are—they are like the punk songs of the 18th century: sometimes silly and irreverent, with a lot of nautical in-jokes, dark humor, and bawdy-sexy connotations. Some are very serious, written for shipmates who died. Many were drinking songs that doubled as songs to keep the sailors’ morale up while they did heavy manual labor. They are often about shipwrecks, leaving loved ones behind, and drowning. Translated from many languages, including French, German, and Old English, and sprinkled with Celtic Gaelic and old-time nautical phrases, sea shanties create their own language and share a narrative about how difficult but poetic life can be—written from the perspective of sailors, male and female pirates, and the ladies who love them … even mermaids!

K: You strike me as someone who has never not created art. What are some of your earliest memories of art? Do you remember when you began trying your hand at making art of your own?
DD: I grew up playing with porcelain dolls handed down from my great-great-great grandma. They were so old, their hair and clothes were disintegrating, so we sewed new ones and Mom glued her own hair to them. That’s why I’m like this—we were raised in the 1970s and ’80s like it was the 1880s. I thought Little House on the Prairie was a show set in current times.

I’ve always known the metallics of Klimt paintings and how gold can reflect dark or shine bright. Rococo fashion, Art Nouveau furniture, and the Art Déco design of Erté. Waterhouse paintings and the pre-Raphaelite academics who based their works on Greek mythology and Arthurian legend. The pen and ink illustration of Aubrey Beardsley, the writing and poetry of Oscar Wilde, and the beautiful world he created with his details and wry wit. There was the classic turn-of-the-century world building of the original Wizard of Oz series and their imaginative pen and ink illustrations and of course the Alice in Wonderland books from the 1860s. At the time, I didn’t understand that most people I’d meet wouldn’t know anything about the things I held most dear, and when I met anyone who did, I would cry with delight at being understood.

I also saw Zap comics from the 1960s and loved Tales From the Crypt comics from the 1950s, which showed women as old hags, sexy scary witches, pretty ghosts, and ax murderers in all kinds of fabulous roles beyond the sex objects or moms I saw in mainstream media. I loved Edward Gorey and The Addams Family cartoons and read the Hernandez brothers’ comics on Fantagraphics as a teen. All this showed me I could have a career as an alternative cartoonist and graphic novelist when
I had the opportunity—that there was a place for me in the world, and if my art had a classic style it would never go out of style.

My parents and great grandma encouraged me to draw and write the picture books I was so passionate to make as a child. I started drawing illustrated books at age two and was so excited to be able to read and write. Mom would take the pages I drew and type the words at the top that I dictated as the story. She also read us fairy tales and classic stories every night.

Discover more about Dame Darcy at damedarcy.com. Visit Kambriel online at kambriel.com.

K: You’re a creature with a seemingly endless depth of creative energy and a long and always growing legacy of artistic creations. How do you see yourself at your core—your driving force? What is your best hope for what you can communicate via your work?
DD: Picture books, graphic novels, and comic books will always be a perfect way to engage all ages. Publishing is really creating a legacy. When I read Oscar Wilde as a kid, I didn’t understand his voice was coming to me from a century ago—his work is so contemporary. I didn’t know until later that my beloved Oscar Wilde was persecuted and tortured in prison for being gay. This broke my heart and is why I still identify as LGBTQ, an advocate for all things as beautiful and bitchy as my dear Oscar. Once I understood what a century was and how many of the things I loved were centuries old, I vowed to make books that kids in 2175 would find in a dusty attic to enrich their lives and make them laugh the way the books I had did. Fairy tales are one of the only ways we have recorded women’s history. In many of the tales told by teen girls and grandmas to children while they babysat and the parents were away working, the main protagonists were young women or children and the bad characters served as warnings to watch out for predatory men or not to marry a lazy husband or be lazy, and to have morals yourself. This was all changed when the Brothers Grimm, with their patriarchal agenda, recorded the folk tales and changed the bad people into witches. But the truth still shines through.

K: What would you love to be able to inspire in others?
DD: Magic beings need to know that they don’t need to change to fit in. You are already perfect and unique. At every age, everywhere, every race and gender. Diversity in everything is integral to life, and society is flawed, not you. By celebrating our rare individuality and aspiring to be our best selves, we can make a better world.

We could not help but notice that one of our favorite artists, Annie Stegg, whose work we’ve featured numerous times on these pages as well as on our social media, seems to have a thing for the sea. And sea monsters. And ships, and various creatures flailing about in the waves. Below we ask her a bit about her inspiration and oceanic love.

Enchanted Living: Can you tell us what inspires you?
Annie Stegg: I am very inspired by folklore and mythology and the natural world. Nothing quite compares to the beauty found in nature. Fairy tales and folklore help shape how we see the world and act as reflections of a different time. Through these stories we can explore different cultures as well as ourselves, and I am very drawn to that.

EL: What are you trying to portray in your work?
AS: I really hope someone viewing my work will see the beauty in things that maybe aren’t traditionally seen as beautiful, and maybe just bring a little bit more mystery into the world. I really like hearing other people’s interpretations of my work. Symbols and themes are going to be different from person to person, and for that reason I actually really don’t like talking too much about what I was thinking when creating a piece. I don’t want to change a vision that someone else had or what it represented to them. Every once in a while someone will write to me and tell me what they felt when looking at a certain painting. It’s always nice and encouraging for me as an artist if they’ve found something hidden or have made a connection that other people haven’t. It makes me feel like I’ve found a kindred spirit.

EL: You have a lot of water imagery in your work. Can you talk about that?
AS: Water has always been a symbol of mystery and the unknown. I love to think about what lurks in the depths. When I was younger, I lived in a house that had a stream in the backyard. An entire world could exist under a rock—something that was hidden until I came to uncover it. There were so many questions and so much mystery! It was amazing how something small, like a rainstorm, could change everything. The water would rise, and then suddenly there was a new world to explore.

EL: You also feature many creatures and humans interacting with animals in some way.
AS: Humans have always shared a relationship with animals, and for many of us, they are part of our everyday lives. Almost twenty-three years ago I brought home a pair of small silvery catfish to live in the aquarium in my bedroom at my parents’ home. I loved them so much, though they were not particularly eye-catching fish. They don’t have long flowing fins or bright colors. They would dart back and forth and back and forth endlessly. As I grew up, so did my little catfish. I graduated high school and college. I moved out into my first apartment. I started my career as an artist. I eventually bought a house. I got married and had children. With every move I made, my fish would get a new home as well. Their small aquarium eventually became a 190-gallon tank, which currently sits in my living room. Over time my catfish lost their silvery color and turned a deep charcoal gray. Only hints of the silver remained. But what they lost aesthetically, they did not lose in spirit. Back and forth and back and forth they would swim, just like when they were tiny. I know it may seem strange to get attached to a fish. I remember staying up late in my childhood home to secretly draw in my room using the glow of their aquarium as my source of light. I would have never guessed then that one day my children would be staring through the glass to look at these same creatures swimming back and forth and back and forth. They have appeared in quite a few of my paintings.

EL: Do you have favorite ocean myths?
AS: I enjoy reading about the goddess nymphs in Greek mythology. There were fifty nereids who presided over different aspects of the sea, from the sea shore to the frothy waves. It is so interesting to read about the personification of these natural elements to a mythical human form.

EL: How do you stay enchanted in your own life?
AS: I love having a quiet time to myself for reflection and discovery. The time I spend painting is how I center myself. It’s a visual representation of my current thoughts and feelings. When I look at one of my paintings, I can remember what was happening in my life at the time I was creating it—the amalgamation of invisible thoughts and feelings that went into this one tangible object. For me, art is how I communicate to the world. Whenever I need inspiration, getting outside and being in nature always helps me get new ideas for new works and feel inspired again! I really enjoy hiking and gardening. Even places that I visit often, like my own backyard, are constantly transforming as things grow and the seasons change. Once a year I plan a longer trip to a nature preserve on the eastern coast of Georgia that I’ve been visiting since my childhood. Because the area is protected, the beaches are wild with natural beauty. It’s incredibly inspiring.

Find Annie Stegg’s work at gallerygerard.com/the-art-of-annie-stegg. Follow Carolyn Turgeon on Instagram @carolynturgeon.

We wanted to turn to Deep Midnight Perfumes and our beautiful late friend Cat Marx, who passed away two years ago. Here’s an In Memoriam for her.

Here’s a message from her partner, John:

“Hello friends! I’m John, current owner of Deep Midnight Perfumes, an indie perfumery located in Minneapolis, MN. Cat, my business partner and co-owner of DMP, sadly passed away in December [2020] and I’m trying to fill her shoes. This was a labor of love for her, and I hope to honor and continue her legacy—at first by continuing to run the shop, and later by supplementing her catalog with creations of my own.

Cat and I collaborated on nearly everything. She was a brilliant perfumer, and I was… also there. If you’re curious about scents that are uniquely mine, here are a few: Vintage, Wildwood, Sangreal, Drummer Boy, Faerie Knight, Prairie Gothic, the Walking Dead sets, and Feathers in the Moonlight (numbers 1,2,4,5,6). I share Cat’s love of the creative process, which for us meant that the scent is informed by the story. This leads to a wide variety of fascinating results—some simple, some complicated, some wonderful, and others wonderfully weird.

We sold on Etsy from 2010-2020 with a 5 star rating. We were consistently in the top 1-10% of Etsy sellers on Handmade Hunt. Over 300 unique perfumes are in the shop year round. All perfumes are vegan, preservative free, alcohol free, and cruelty free. The carrier base is scent free organic jojoba oil from plants grown in the USA.

Please continue to enjoy your favorites and perhaps find new favorites to come!

With love and gratitude,

John”

Isn’t that beautiful? Below we ask John some questions:

Would you like to say a few words about Cat?   
Cat was a source of light and love, and treasured everyone she met. In 2009 she asked me if I’d be interested in starting a perfume shop with her. It was something she’d wanted to do since she was a child enchanted by Avon and Coty. I thought it was a good idea. We opened with a minimal investment and just 20 unique scents. Our packaging was terrible! We hand cut labels out of parchment (and burned the edges because that seemed cool at the time) and affixed them to cheap clear bottles with packing tape. We came a long way from such humble beginnings, mainly through her efforts and desire to make the best product we possibly could, always thinking about what we could improve. She created a legacy, and I’m happy to carry it forward on her behalf.
 
What are your hopes and intentions for Deep Midnight Perfumes?
My hope is to continue to grow the business and expand the perfume catalogue. There are many partially formulated scents, and I have my own ideas as well. I intend to run the shop for the foreseeable future. As long as people support the effort, I’m happy to do it.
 
How is your design philosophy unique?
While Cat and I shared fundamental philosophies, tailoring scents to characters and stories, and painstakingly iterating on formulas until they’re as good as they can be, I do also have a slightly undisciplined streak. I’m always trying to sneak in something a bit unexpected or bizarre. Cat would often reign me in, but some things slipped through the way I wanted. A few examples would be the almonds in Saturnalia, the anise in Comfort & Joy, the entirety of Prairie Gothic and Marzipan Moon. The last one came about because I thought, all of these ingredients could easily be overpowering in other scents, but what if they were all in the same scent? As it turned out, not too bad.
 
What’s new in the shop?
Sympatheia, the last scent Cat formulated.

Faerie Kitten, one of the first scents I created maybe 10 years ago. Atribute to Cat. Michaeline McDonald was kind enough to license her artwork for it. (“Innocence Fairy Cat” Artwork ©2004 Michaeline McDonald. https://www.etsy.com/shop/WiseTailsArt)

We wanted to tell you about Glowwood, a brand-new oracle card deck and companion book rooted in ecology created by Ukrainian-American artist and writer Lisa Biletska. Five years in the making, Glowwood is truly the consequence of a deep and studied passion for the natural world. As Lisa writes in the Glowwood Companion’s introductory letter: For so long, the woods have been a source of knowledge, inspiration, and companionship for me. I have always tried to reciprocate by paying attention and paying tribute. This is how Glowwood came to be—through attention.

Glowwood’s 78 forest beings (plants, insects, fungi, lichens, and minerals) are here to draw us in, lift the veil of glowing design, and reveal the true magic of nature. Their world is non-hierarchical, non-humancentric, and profoundly real. The readable landscapes they form become reflections of our own selves: As we think about our desires, questions, and problems through the lifeways of the Glowwood creatures, their wild, interwebbed relationships enchant us to see our own world in renewed, reimagined ways. 

Glowwood is nature’s language. The cards are the words. The spreads are the sentences. 
— the Glowwood Companion

Lisa says that she doesn’t believe the Glowwood oracle card system is something she made up. She feels she has only received and passed on some of the messages we can all hear in nature. What makes the Glowwood cards so powerful is that they hinge on real ecological relationships and encode the world’s actual ways of being. It’s no wonder Glowwood is already attaining a small-yet-devoted cult following of readers who find that the cards and their poetry-in-prose paired texts hold profound insights for their own lives: By correlating the two systems—human lifeways and the lifeways of the woods—they can weave new, livable stories about themselves and the worlds they inhabit. 

Lisa believes that this kind of inspired world-building, storytelling, and speculative projecting is at the root of all personal transformation and even world transformation, and is “most definitely something to live for.”

The box itself is a luxury affair: 78 thick, matte cards illustrated in a mysterious botanical style; a 276-page book of transcendental prose poetry and ecological tidbits that will help you delve into Glowwood’s richly layered content matter; and a heavy-duty drawstring bag to keep your cards safe during transport. All ship in a custom-designed sturdy box.

Intrigued? Read Lisa’s interview with her own deck below, or head over to glowwoodcards.com right away to find out why Glowwood is being called “the project of the decade” for yourself. 

To stay in touch, be sure to follow Glowwood’s Instagram here and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/glowwoodoraclecards. You can also find more of Lisa’s work on her personal website.

A Deck Interview with the Glowwood Oracle (conducted by its creator, Lisa Biletska)

When I feel like I know something, such as my own deck, I like to check myself. Interviewing a deck is one way of getting to know it better. Decks form unique bonds with their owners, so I thought you might enjoy hearing about Glowwood’s bond with me. Thanks to James Himm Mitchell for sharing the spread below, which comes to us by way of Fire Raven and the Aeclectic Tarot community forum. Italicized passages are direct quotations from The Glowwood Companion, which ships with the deck.

Tell me something about yourself: the Fall Webworm

I thought about Glowwood for years before I was actually able to sit down and create it start to finish. That period before the deck was filled with other projects, other dreams, “auxiliary engagements” like woodswalking, reading, foraging, a happenstance children’s summer camp—which eventually formed the structure from which the deck could stem. These external activities were Glowwood’s inheritance; they are the salt of it, the real longterm investment, and Glowwood is their expression. Of course, once I did have the luxury, protection, and personal space of giving Glowwood my undivided attention, it took about a year of reclusive moonlit silkspinning to give that expression a form. So does the Webworm lushly sheathe itself in silk and anything loose that can be found and used for warmth to envelop…the nascent promise. So much more I could say about this card regarding Glowwood’s beginnings, but I’ll stop here.

2. What are your strengths?: the Spider Mite

…a takedown by a thousand cuts. A transfer of power, sugar and sunlight slurped and usurped. Acknowledge the following change in energies: The longterm, the persistent, the immovable, the singular, and often the vulnerable, which wielded and wildcrafted the most rudimentary, elemental energies, is now passing into the invulnerable, the accelerated, the roaming, the crowd, the dispersed… 

A bold statement from the Spider Mite and somewhat expected. Deep within Glowwood’s bedrock, running up and down its nervous system, is the ecological model: a non-hierarchical system where each being plays a unique role. It is also non-archetypal, so while no single “self” gets center stage, each lives a full, complex, idiosyncratic life, that is always intimately tied to the lifeways of others and to the system entire. Why does the Spider Mite sound so militant? Because the “old model”, as we all know by now, is also the model of heroes, human kings, avarice, and arrogance. It’s also the vulnerable model — kings are easily usurped. The webbed or rhizomatic structure (which is depicted on the card backs) distributes power across loci, setting off risk. Thinking together with this, through Glowwood, feels a bit like when your ears finally pop after flying or being underwater. A barely perceptible movement resulting in profound experiential effects.

What are your (perceived) limitations?: the Milkweed

…Around this showy, attractive, and lofty presence, a dedicated inner circle has gathered. Some depend heavily on the Milkweed for support and protection. Some hope it might share methods that will help them successfully defend themselves against aggressors. And yet this is often what it cannot do for itself…It requires disruption to business as usual, leeway, preferential treatment, and does poorly when faced with initial competition, despite possessing numerous tactics to branch out into new areas. It is also easily bruised. However, when its spirit does take hold of a place, it can become tenacious and fierce… 

I am reading this card regarding Glowwood’s presence in the world. Channeling human lives and preoccupations through Spider Mites and rock ecology can be fascinating, peculiar, and certainly niche. Glowwood’s approach is challenging. It demands a deep presence and involvement and rewards the seeker in kind. Naturally, the pool of people who dare to venture into Glowwood is smaller, but they do tend to really dig it.

What are you here to teach me and/or What can I learn from you?: the Spider Wasp

Glowwood is, of course, a product not only of my love for the woods but also of my personal journey, one that has been terrific and terrifying by turns, certainly tortuous. The Spider Wasp has that take-charge attitude and strong approachthat focuses on movement in a landscape that may offer limited resources, where even water may be scarce. As a product of my history, Glowwood has resiliency stitched in as a golden thread. This is also an ecological lesson. Urging us towards practicality, resourcefulness, and composure.

How do I best work with you and/or How would you like to be used?: the Death Cap

I’m glad this card came up, because it really illustrates what I mean when I say the deck is “not archetypal”, nor human-centric, nor is it based on mythology or stereotypes. We are looking at each being from its own perspective and the role it plays within its surroundings. The Death Cap is the most protective card of the deck. The keywords in the Companion have us contend with paradox: Glowwood, it seems, speaks to both atomic transformation and complete destruction, is a black box and yet possesses extreme potency, and despite these disquieting promises is very safe and secure. To those familiar with Hindu gods, I will say that this is Glowwood’s Kali energy — engaging with that “fullness of time” that comes from embracing the “changing aspect of nature”. People’s experience with the deck has been penetrating and unnerving: “uncanny” is a word I hear often. These kinds of portals must, I feel, always have a “do not disturb” sign on them, such is the nature of the quest. As Glowwood appropriately quips here, perhaps you should not ask the question or expect an answer.

What will our relationship be like?: the Pillow Lichen

Maybe by now you too, dear reader, are sensing “the uncanny”. I do every time I read with this deck (Is it why I can’t read with it often? Too real, too much, too raw?) The Pillow Lichen is, like the other lichens in the deck, a card of partnership. This specific lichen indicates a unique habitat or engagement of great longevity and complexity. I could only hope for such a relationship with Glowwood — union, strong partnership, synergy, resourcefulness. Reassuring!