Regenerative Fashion, Witch Hunts & Re-Enchantment, with Lucianne Tonti

How does a fashion editor cotton onto regenerative agriculture, and then find that thread leads her back to the witch hunts? Lucianne Tonti is a prominent journalist, author and consultant specialising in regenerative fashion systems. Her first book was duly called Sundressed: Natural fibres and the future of fashion. That’s now being developed into a docuseries.

Lucianne’s subsequent epic tale is told in her new book, Good Witch: In Search of Our Lost Feminine Power, published by Summit Books. It’s described as ‘A paradigm-shifting book that asks what the world might be like if divine feminine power had never been devalued. And shows us how it is being reclaimed.’

This is the book I wish I read as a young bloke in my teens. I hope both women and men get hold of it in numbers. Lucianne has been on some incredible journeys in the last half dozen years, including visiting many guests on this podcast. But her last couple of years have really dug back into the roots of our struggles, and possibilities. And it makes sense of so much. From gender relations, to health epidemics, to land, politics, economies and so much more.

More on the book:

Today, we can still feel the legacy of the witch hunts: In the way the natural world has been degraded. In the way humans have become disengaged from the things that make us truly happy. A campaign of disenchantment has sought to disconnect us from the earth – and from each other.

But enchantment was never truly lost. Here, Tonti shows us how a return to feminine power is what the world desperately needs now, more than ever.

Chapter markers & transcript.

Recorded 30 July 2026.

Title image of Lucianne by Anne Peeters.

See more photos on the episode web page, and for more behind the scenes, become a supporting listener below.

Lucianne’s Substack, including dispatches from her journeys accompanied by photos.

Her series of book launch events. 

Her write up of her visit to the Haggerty farm last year for Elle Australia, Follow the Flock.

Music: 

Silhouettes, by Muted (from Artlist).

Regeneration, by Amelia Barden.

Transcript

Heritage, Memory, And Duty

Lucianne 0:03

I don't believe that I'm descendant from the witches I was looking at, but I certainly felt like I was revisiting something that was in my in my heritage, like as far back as you can kind of go. We've got a duty to do that as the beneficiaries of colonization. We have a duty to go back and try to figure out what our relationship was like to the land and what it would be like if we were, if we felt like this sense of immense responsibility for the land, as say, you know, Indigenous Australians do. It's time for us to understand that we have in our histories different belief systems that could show us different ways and to go and figure out what that looks like.

Meet Lucianne Tonti And Her Work

AJ 0:46

G'day, Anthony James here for The RegenNarration, featuring the stories that are changing the story, enabling the regeneration of this enchanted planet. How does a fashion editor cotton onto regenerative agriculture and then find that thread leads her back to the witch hunts? Lucianne Tonti is a prominent journalist, author, and consultant specialising in regenerative fashion systems. Her first book was duly called Sundressed: Natural Fibres and the Future of Fashion. That's now being developed into a docuseries. Lucianne's subsequent epic tale is told in her new book, Good Witch: In Search of Our Lost Feminine Power, published by Summit Books. It's described as a paradigm-shifting book that asks what the world might be like if divine feminine power had never been devalued and shows us how it's being reclaimed. This is the book I wish I read as a young bloke in my teens. My hope is that both women and men get hold of it in numbers. Lucianne has been on some incredible journeys in the last half dozen years, including visiting many guests on this podcast. But her last couple of years have really dug back into the roots of our current struggles and possibilities. Lucianne, welcome. It's great to be speaking with you. Thanks a lot for joining me.

Lucianne 2:11

No, thanks so much for having me. It's always nice to talk to somebody in the regenerative agriculture space.

AJ 2:16

Right. Yeah, it's going to be so curious to go there. To start though, can you bring us into where you are and why? But I guess more particularly, like thread that back if you're not at home, to what home feels like to you and and I guess the meaning of your place to you?

Lucianne 2:32

Oh, that's a good question. Okay, so I'm I'm in Tamarama. I'm staying at my friend's apartment, which is in Sydney, which is very close to the beach, which is really beautiful. And it's um it feels a bit local to me because my favorite cafe is up the road, my my one of my favorite yoga studios is around the corner, and I have friends in the area. So um it's not my home, but it has like the kind of key elements that help me feel at home. Um yeah, but it's funny what it takes. I move around a lot. Um, I've lived in Paris, I've lived in London, you know, I've kind of flipped my time between Melbourne and Sydney these days. And if

Home As A Practice Not A Place

Lucianne 3:10

I've got like a yoga studio and a cafe I'm familiar with and a friend I can have coffee with, like kind of at the drop of a hat, then I I feel pretty good.

AJ 3:18

That's great. I'm wondering, in the wake of the book coming out now, such a monumental journey with it. How are you feeling right now?

Lucianne 3:28

Well, it's a good, it's a big question. I was just thinking about, I was thinking about this before because an another girlfriend of mine reached out earlier who my first book came out four years ago, and she also published a book four years ago, and she was asking how it feels this time. And it's very different. Um it's a very different book. It's a that we're touching on bigger topics, so it's a you know, it's got broader appeal. Um, but it's also the media landscape has changed so much in four years. You know, that was kind of still, it was the tail end of COVID, so we were pretty deep in, you know, the world being a little bit more siloed. And yeah, this time I feel very, very proud of this work. Um, but that also brings with it an element of vulnerability because obviously now everybody else gets to read it and you know, weigh in on whether or not I I should feel so proud or not.

AJ 4:21

Right. And it's not the gentle topic, like you've really gone into the thick of things, which is partly why I'm I'm asking about how it feels first, because you went to a lot of the places and you sat in, like effectively sat in the chairs where a lot of the executions were taking place, even like you you went into the heart of this, and we'll talk about why, but just to start with some of the emotions when when you would occasionally express your emotions in the book, and you know, words can sort of pass ephemerally, huh? But when I imagine into you in those places, in those moments, going to all those lengths to get there into the places and really feel into them, that sometimes when you mentioned the hot rushes of fury or or even just terrible sadness, uh, that I I sort of found myself having to stop on the page, you know, and and really imagine into you and not just not just keep reading in those moments. So, how did you navigate that mix?

Lucianne 5:28

So I didn't like I kind of embarked on the journey like a journalist, just like, okay, well, I want to write about these stories, I need to go and visit the places where they happened. And it didn't the reading was hard, doing the research, and that was hard for a few reasons. Like it's very academic, most of the writing about the witch hunts, and so it's very, very dense. So it's an intellectually dense to get through, and then the content is equally dense. And so I was prepared for that, but when I was in the places, I don't know, that it took a different kind of physical toll. Um because it's we're talking about history that's a long time ago, but history that's very, very, very sad. And as a as a woman, uh like knowing how long we've existed with the structures that perpetrated what happened then now, you know, it really um I guess at times it was overwhelming. The rage stuff was very present, and you know, that's not a great emotion for the body. Obviously, it's very tiring. You know, you that means you don't sleep that well. Um means you've got, you know, I was feeling kind of hot all the time too. Um so yeah, so it was, but it felt important to me to um have that in the book because what frustrated me about the academic writing was it felt so removed from the injustice of what had happened to these women. And it's often kind of very cold and clinical, and like this is what the trial notes and the documents tell us. And that's all we can go on, you know. If you're a historian, you can only go on what's written down, but obviously there's lots of space around what's been written down because it, you know, the people that were writing the records were usually the men perpetrating the abuse. So um,

Pride, Vulnerability, And Public Scrutiny

Lucianne 7:20

yeah. So there was it was it was a bit of a swamp to wade through, to be honest with you. And it was offset by how geographically beautiful each place was, but which had its own connotations, you know, that made it very eerie and spooky. And then also this kind of really when I was in Norway, I really and I'm kind of like, you know, at the top of the world, basically, like you're above the tree line. There haven't been trees growing there for thousands of years. You're so close to the Arctic Circle, it wasn't getting dark because that's how far north we were, and it was summer. So there was blue skies and sunshine, like it is outside my window right now, um, at midnight, um, that I understood like how key nature was in everything that transpired because the fear that was being perpetrated in all the places I visited Salem, Scotland, Norway, England, um, Connecticut, was of women's power, but also of the power of the natural world. It was two things moving in um at the same time to kind of try to control things and usher in a different social and economic paradigm.

AJ 8:31

Yeah, and this is where your work here and our convergence, I suppose, partly through regenerative agriculture circles, and we'll come to that. It meets an earlier set of work and research I had done in sustainability, going back to the year 2000 when I met an old mentor of mine, because that's when he introduced indeed some of the people you met, like meeting Carolyn Merchant at age 90, extraordinary, who was saying this from the get-go of any concerns about nature and the sustainability movement and what's moved, what's come into where it is today. So it was fascinating to be reading on those levels. But before we go into that in more depth, Lucien, also like there was this sort of parallel I noted as well, which sort of stands out to me increasingly in people's journeys, and it did in yours, that there were coincidences that that were really stark at times. And, you know, you mentioned magic a lot, and we'll go perhaps a bit more into what what you were talking about on that front too, but that there was there was a bit of enchantment to use the word that you invoke a lot too in your journey about this harrowing stuff as well.

Lucianne 9:42

Yeah. Well, I'm glad you picked up on that. Was it very intentional? Um But yeah, there were, I mean, that is how I think if you're paying attention, that's how the world operates, you know. There's uh coincidences and um bigger forces at play. And we used to always across the West, it was very common that people believed that there were supernatural forces at play, that nature was enchanted, that it we had a sacred obligation to protect it. And, you know, I guess whatever enchantment means to us now, I was trying to kind of weave those threads through the book in a way that wasn't like here's a spell, you know, or or um that was too kind of um, I don't like using woo-woo as a bad term, but you know, that was too woo-woo for for people. It was important to me to like try to point out like we live in an enchanted world. We just do. We have just been conditioned over 300 years to believe in the West that nature is not enchanted and that it is the earth operates like a machine that we can exploit in the name of profit. But I think uh we're everything is better for all of us when we look at look at nature and look at the kind of gifts that you know the universe delivers and appreciate them for um how wonderful and special and um precious they are.

AJ 11:09

Indeed. So it's telling too in that sense that it was your work as a fashion editor that led you to this journey. How did that happen?

Lucianne 11:20

So so I mean it's fun, it is it really interesting because people think it's not linear, but it actually is very linear to go. So my first book was about the way we farm natural fibers and you know, advocating for the regenerative farming of natural fibers and that that that makes the most beautiful clothes. And so I was doing a um some travel around the the first book coming out and visiting some different places, and I went to the Fibre Shed headquarters, and Fibre Shed is um like basically the ground zero of regenerative fiber farming, and it's based just out at outside of Point Reyes. It was founded by this amazing woman called Rebecca Burgess, who's kind of like a savant in this uh space and just thinks so much further ahead than everybody else and bigger picture and all of that stuff. And I was at the headquarters and I was so excited to go because so much of her work had informed my book. And, you know, I got to meet her and I was getting a tour of the property, and you know, in a meadow um outside the back of the house, they were growing dye plants, and it like the kind of sunlight was coming through low through the trees, and it was like very beautiful and dewy. And um we walked around the corner and there was a stream, and under the branches of this really big tree, there was a circle of stools, and I was kind of like, Oh, what happens here? Like it looked like somewhere you would cast a spell. And um, you know, the woman showing me around was like, Oh no, that's where we do weaving. And then we went into the

Inside The Witch Hunt Landscapes

Lucianne 12:40

dye shed, and it was just big copper cauldrons everywhere, and vials of powders and um herbs and flowers untied in bundles drying on the ceiling, and there were just little light bulbs going off in my brain, like, why does this feel so witchy? Uh and I went, I left and um basically just started to pull at that thread. And what you know, I think probably one of the first books I picked up was Caliban and the Witch, that's obviously Sylvia Federici also informed a lot of Good Witch. And I you just it was very clear the Venn diagram between um the iconography of women's work and the iconography of the witch hunts was very apparent. And you know, when you think of, say, the classic fairy tales like Rapunzel, the witch lives in the garden. You know, she's got a uh this enchanted garden that she's growing and they're stealing from her, and she gets angry at them, she steals the baby. Um, Sleeping Beauty, the witch, what's what she got, what's her weapon is a spindle, you know. Um Aurora pricks her Briar Rose, pricks her finger on the spindle and she falls asleep for a hundred years. And so you kind of start to you s like it. Basically, it was like, well, there's something here. And then when you kind of start pulling further and it gets you to the witch hunts, and then the realization that the witch hunts spans the three centuries that preceded industrialization. So they're the same time as we're experiencing the Enlightenment and the Renaissance and basically shifting from agrarian societies where everybody's subsisting subsisting off the land to an industrial society. And what that meant was we had 300 years of attacking women for their um economic and social power at the same time as we are reordering our thinking about the way we view the natural world. It's no longer enchanted, as we were talking about before. Now it's become a machine that we can put to work in the name of progress and profit. And basically, we've been living under that paradigm ever since. So, and you know, that kind of brings us here, like uh, I'm so bad at maths, 250 years later, 200 years later. Um and it you as we're looking at the way the world works now, yeah, it uh certain things start to make sense. And I think as we're trying to figure out where we go forward, um looking back and re reflecting on what was happening right before we got here to the paradigm that brought us here is important.

AJ 15:07

It so is. We'll flesh this out a little more, but before we do, just to take a little step back further, how did you first get onto regenerative farming, regenerative fashion, if you will, and and come to write that first book, Sundressed?

Lucianne 15:22

So I've worked in fashion my whole life, I feel like, since I was like 16 or 17, but I was always studying other things. So I studied media and then I studied politics, and then I got a law degree and kind of like, but I kind of kept getting pulled back into fashion. And but I always was had a problem. I felt the system was exploitative, I knew how bad it was for the environment, you know. It I it it troubled me, let's put it like that. Um but then I moved, I moved to London, and then I moved to Paris, and I was, you know, still always working in fashion. And in Paris, I started working for this um French brand called Christessaya, and they basically only worked with natural fibers. They refused to work with any synthetic materials, and it was like the highest quality natural fibres made at the like the best factories in the world, and that's not hyperbole when I say that. So they were really beautiful garments and they were militant about it. And so that really drove the three years I worked with them, really drove my love of natural fibers even further. Um, and then when I left that business, I started a showroom and I was just working with sustainable brands. So I I had an interest in sustainability since my honours thesis was about was called neoliberalism, fast fashion and the environment, if you'll believe it, in 2012, 2009 or something like that. And um anyway, so I'm so it was I kind of carried through, and then we had I had this showroom for 2019, and we were kind of doing press and sales and a bit of sustainability strategy for these designers that were you know making really beautiful clothes. And then of course COVID happened and I left Paris being like, I'll just go home and write out, you know, whatever this pandemic is. And then I got stuck in Australia and had time for the first time in a long time. I had time on my hands, and I so I like everybody, started reading more. Um, I, you know, kind of discovered the work of FibreShed and um I'd had this encounter with this woman called Helen Crowley, who is also another big advocate of regenerative fiber farming. Well, I was in London just before I left, and she talked about how regenerative agriculture and natural fibers could be used as a tool to kind of heal the earth. And all of the issues that you have with sustainability as a paradigm that it's like it doesn't really fix anything, and that you're just kind of constantly talking about how to mitigate harm. Regeneration proved to be a counter to that. So it was like, we're not just talking about mitigating carbon emissions, we're talking about sequestering them. We're not just talking about uh how much water are we using, we're talking about actually being able to uh rehabilitate the land so that it can store more water and have healthier water cycles. Like, you know, it was just biodiversity. Like it was just like bang, bang, bang, all of these amazing things. Plus, as somebody who loves beautiful clothes, who's worked with beautiful clothes my whole life, still gave, still had this amazing payoff of like, you know, beautiful garments. And so, you know, I'm in Australia, there's lots of wool farming. When we are not like locked down in the tightest lockdowns ever, I went and started visiting some farms and basically had this idea for the book very quickly. I'd always loved writing, I'd always been a writer, you know, I'd been, and so it I I don't know where really I got the confidence to think I could just go and do it. But it I I mean, it happened very quickly. I had I had some good friends in Paris who were very successful writers who helped me, helped me craft the proposal and told me what to do. And um, and then basically from then on I would just became a journalist.

Enchantment, Coincidence, And Nature’s Power

Lucianne 18:50

I got the book deal very quickly, and then um I just and I carved, well, I and I found a niche um that and I got a column in The Guardian and started writing for the Saturday paper and was very lucky that I found editors who were indulgent of my love of sustainability. And um and yeah, and it just kind of has uh rolled on from there. And then um once the world opened back up again, I could, you know, reconnect with kind of my networks overseas. And um interestingly enough, now Helen Crowley is the executive producer on the Sundress docuseries, which is like a long way from being a reality, but um, you know, you know how well the world works where important people who have an impact on you can kind of come back around and still be very important now. So um, so yeah, it's been an interesting kind of I guess six years. Yeah. Now we're here, now and book number two's out, and um, yeah, it's been a bit of a journey.

AJ 19:52

Sure has. Look where the trail's gone. So it was last year that you wrote up a piece for Elle magazine on your visit to the Haggerty farm over here in WA's wheat belt. So, I mean, firstly, I'm curious how that went, but you hadn't met prior to Sundressed then?

Lucianne 20:06

No, I hadn't met them when I had was writing Sundressed. I was kind of talking to Charles Massey a lot. He was kind of my main sheep farmer, who's also another fabulous and you know, whose book inspired a lot of also I used his book for Good Witch too. So he's um really I oh I'm indebted to him for sure. Um no, but I had met Die and Ian, not Ian, but I had met Die at um textile exchange a couple of months before.

AJ 20:32

Uh yeah, yeah. Brilliant. And then you got on the plane and went to visit.

Lucianne 20:36

Yeah, flew three hours over from I mean, it was epic. Their farm is amazing. But God, it was a long day because I I got the red eye from Melbourne, met another journalist and a photographer at the airport in Perth, got the hire car. The hire car was in my name, so I was the only one that was allowed to drive it. Then we drove three hours out to the farm. And then, of course, you know, I mean, I love I love visiting farms so much, but they're always so excited to, and they've got so much to tell you. And so you then you're just like out and on the land, and you're so hot, and like um it was, but yeah, we had a great time. And they really what they're doing there uh is very special. Um, and they're very, they're all so enigmatic, the three of them. Um, and I so I think they're great advocates for healthy soil, producing healthy food and healthy sheep and healthy landscapes and everything else. So um, no, I'm very um they're the I'm very lucky to get to meet people like them. So you're lucky that they're your neighbors.

AJ 21:36

Oh, and we eat their food, incredibly lucky. Yeah, I mean, there is such a difference, my goodness. And you mentioned some of the the reasons why in the article, of course, and they've featured on the podcast, certainly. So, how to put this in the process of writing Good Witch, which you I imagine you were in at the time, I imagine you are you are there at that farm, let alone others. feel like it's mapping on to the good witch story that, you know, dare I say it, but I I have certainly thought it, that in a different era, a Diane Haggerty was in the cohort we're referring to with the witch hunts.

Lucianne 22:17

100%. Of course. This is a woman with like immense natural like, you know, she calls it natural intelligence farming, but like that those ideas are coming from her. She's got an innate understanding of her landscape and what it needs and she's doing things differently. She's outspoken. She's very clever. She's strong for sure. I mean that yeah that's what they and you see it still, right? Because they get, I know they like there are tensions and issues with other farmers in the region too. And I've, you know, and I'm not so privy to exactly what's gone on for them, but I I have come up against it too.

AJ 22:51

Like not to the same extent but like I would I don't would never presume to tell a farmer what to do obviously I'm a fashion editor but but you know when I talk about regenerative agriculture more in the cotton space I've had lots of pushback from people who from farmers who don't want to change the way that they farm who think that it's all hippy dippy sounds nice doesn't really work you know um and yeah the systems are entrenched absolutely yep okay let's delve more into into some of the backdrop of worldview and so forth that informs how this is playing out but en route there it was fascinating to read that piece in our or reread it because I know I got it at the time a year ago reread it and that at the outset there was reference to obviously the Haggerty's connection in selling their wool and it being used by Stella McCartney's

From Natural Fibres To Witch Trials

AJ 23:40

mob over in England. And it was she was being awarded by the king and how that hit me because I'm reading your book and and the witch hunts were no were no grassroots mobilization. They were a state orchestrated thing and there was one particular king at the heart of it that then you found was connected to some of these key figures in the Enlightenment thinking and scientific revolution this is where it gets really meaty obviously yeah I mean amazing that it's come that far in whatever the 300 years since that that there could be a moment where a king is a King of England's awarding Stella for this but yeah the King of England in the era we're talking about was was integral to the whole witch hunt phenomenon huh?

Lucianne 24:30

Yes so I do think King Charles is doing good work in this space. So we should give him props where it's due. But yeah I mean King James um who there are other witch hunters across Europe but I you know you have to kind of narrow the scope down to tell the story. So I focus on um a hundred year period that begins with King James um and the first witch hunts that he perpetrated in Scotland. And you know essentially what we see in the way he changes the laws and and you know the kind of religious tensions that are happening is that he's got this fear of of witches, this paranoia of witches, especially when he's getting married and there are storms disrupting their ships and so he goes on a witch hunt when he gets back and he's a very young man. And that kind of kicks off the first witch craze that was in Scotland. But what we see later on is how close he becomes with Francis Bacon who is his attorney general and also you know we now understand we now still think of Francis Bacon as the father of the scientific revolution and the father of modern science. But where they overlap is King James wrote a book on how to hunt witches called demonology. And Francis Bacon wrote a book on how to advance science called the advancement of learning which is dedicated to King James. And I'm drawing on Carolyn Merchant's academic work here. I'm not um I didn't I'm not going to do this first primary source research myself. So this is very much Carolyn Merchant's thesis. But basically what we see is that the language that Francis Bacon uses when he talks about the environment that it needs to be restrained that it's and prodded and probed until she reveals her secrets is the same language that King James is using when he talks about how you torture a witch basically you go searching for the witch's the witch's mark to prove that she is guilty. And we know Francis Bacon was trying to carry favor with the king so obviously you know he was there was something clever that he was doing there. But the reality of what we have seen now when we reflect back on the last you know 400 years, 300 years is how Francis Bacon's advocating for nature to be r restrained, dominated and all her secrets revealed has led us to climate change. And it's led us to you know it's cover it's gotten us so far. Like I I like progress in air conditioning and electricity as much as the next person um you know but we are we have we are pushing the the earth past the limit of its um natural resources and it make it is making it a very dangerous place for us to live.

AJ 27:18

And I think we really do need to understand you know what were the origins of this thinking what was going on at the time you know I was MC one of the things that came out of the podcast is when we ran around Australia in 2018 yes on the back of Charlie Massey's book and came back to Perth and the first big regenerative conference was happening was going to happen uh later that year and I was asked to MC it years down the track things have come as you have found with your incredible research globally on the regenerative front things have come so far. So while we're facing this stuff and we have to face this stuff there because the only way we're going to actually get there isn't it but certainly the bed is laid the resurgence is in motion so a bunch of years down the track I'm MC of another of a follow-up conference and I actually even the dialogue in the room was hedging at this stuff but only hedging in it right because this is the value of your work not many have stitched it through as you have here but it was hedging at it the understanding of broadly what's been lost and how we've and how we've lost it what's been the action upon the world and the view of the world just not where it's come from necessarily but in that moment I actually drew upon that language from Francis Bacon and said it. I said this there is rape language at the heart of what we're talking about. And it was fascinating because afterwards I saw a woman um who got on some feed chat feed or whatever online for whom that really landed and r and you know resonated and then a bloke who dismissed it and thought that was polarizing.

Lucianne 29:04

Yeah so I'm wondering let's go to the blokey to the bloke reactions that you're getting and have got through the journey how does it turn up for you I mean so the so both my brothers read the book um and they are exceptional in their in they're both of them very smart but one's got a PhD the other one's a doctor um a medical doctor um so and they're very gentle men so I mean that's one thing and they're also my little brothers so they're only going to tell me it was good well that's not true the one with the PhD likes to nitpick but um but he he still they both they both enjoyed it but I could see the one with the PhD has um had a daughter a a little girl she's um almost two now 18 months and you know and I can you know he's thinking I he thinks very deeply anyway but obviously I could see him kind of um thinking about how like how you men get to move through the world and differently to to women um but I haven't you're probably the third guy that's read it yeah wow really or maybe I've had one other male no one of my other best friends has read it but he kind of he he's gay so he was it it feels different. He's a fashion designer and so he was very also very like just also very supportive of it. But I'm bracing for I had a Guardian article on Witches over come out over the weekend and there were lots of comments from men on the bottom telling me that I got stuff wrong or like oh the patriarchy again or kind of that kind of viral like God forbid it'll be about the patriarchy and I mean I hate to break it to the button like it's like look at what is happening in the world like Trump is bombing everything you know the we're still building new coal mines even though we've got like renewable energy it's cleaner and cheaper like um yeah uh so I but it's I'm also um although the book focuses on women I do like the the feminine power thing is important to me because men have feminine feminine energy in them too and women have masculine energy in them. So I'm really not a fan of advocating for let's abandon patriarchy and bring in a matriarchy. I think that's a reductive conversation. It's very much got to be about how do we bring back this feminine energy that is about rooted in and Carolyn Merchant even said it to me when I went to visit her. She was like you know men have feminine energy men have a connection to the natural world too it's not just women it's just that we've we're living in a society with a value system that it like tells everybody to suppress and ignore that energy. And what we need is all of us, we need a reorganization of the structures of our lives so that we can all be spending more time on care work, on gardening, on you know making things beautiful so it's not just like that's silly women's business over there and you know they get to go and have you know conversations in Gigger with their friends while men get to go and be men over there and just make the money and be quiet.

AJ 32:09

Oh totally Lucianne I mean for me it's funny you know you talk about gentle men appreciating the book I as much felt I don't know warrior reaction or something you know archetypal masculine protection reaction. So that it wasn't a gentle response. I mean sure other parts of me are I mean I like to think I I you know I can appreciate I mean this is the thing isn't it it's like it's bringing it together it's not one without the other it's because that's the other part that really hits me. It's like I don't want to be in a world where uh I never know what it feels like to have a partner who actually wants to be there or a natural world that's so diminished and impoverished we're looking for the next cheap thrill because all the big ones have gone like I don't want to live in that world. So I'm looking for I you know I read your book and I sort of feel like it needs to almost be prescribed reading at at school level you know like at high school I should have learned this.

Lucianne 33:14

Yeah well we all I agree I mean we all should have learned a lot more in high school than we do I think I mean but yeah I'm well I well like it makes I think especially it lands because it explains so much about the

Regeneration As The Antidote To Harm

Lucianne 33:30

way that we're like things in our society that aren't working. Childcare's not working age care is not working like you know the imbalance uh in the marital home like these the things that are kind of broken down even the fact that there's so much processed crap at the supermarket and not enough locally grown fruits and vegetables like it really these are these are the building blocks of our lives and yet somehow we have treated been treating them like they are a sideshow and it's not um it's not good enough for any of us and it's it is time that now that I'm doing the press I realize I feel like I'm like advocating for a revolution but um it's time it's time no I mean well it is you know I did um yeah I was on um small talk which is like the big small talk of the one of the ones of Hannah Ferguson's podcast this morning who's obviously running against the prime minister and I didn't get to meet her but I was um so thrilled that it was this week I you know this a young woman standing up to the prime minister it um and saying you need to get it together it feels good.

AJ 34:37

Oh well this is case in point it can only be good for all of us yeah whether you would back Hannah or not it can only be that it's an invigorated uh democracy where we are benefiting from respective insights and ways of seeing the world like that's what yeah that's the gold it's you know I can't help too of course but think of oh by the way yeah proud subscriber to cheek media Hannah's outfit yeah for all those reasons it's it's fantastic and I mean this is again the hard hard things to say in a few words um that never touch the sides of what the actual phenomenon we're dealing with but I sort of need to say it too in fact you had a line in the book I think that was something along the lines of this is the same ideology killing women now. And I don't know that necessarily in the book I can't remember exactly that you were referring directly to domestic violence and the situation we have right now in Australia but not obviously only Australia but certainly that that's front and centre that we have we have a dynamic where I mean literally in the week before I had I was reading the book Cheek Media said that in the preceding week four women and girls had been killed by a male known to them. So often it's intimate partner or former partner. And the silence is deafening so went the headline what we know is that we're four years in in Australia to a federal plan the Prime Minister you know brought to bear uh to address this and it's not working. And it it so appears to me to point in the direction of your book essentially say it's not working because there's a substrate there's an undercurrent there and until we address that we're gonna be coming up against it.

Lucianne 36:28

Yeah I I and I don't think men really appreciate the violence that women every woman is dealing with like it's not all day every day but it's very present. I've been followed home by strange a strange man who like tried to grab me on a street corner. Like it's a every woman has a story um about um you know dealing with male um aggression whether it's sexual or um you know otherwise uh and we get good at managing it we're good at managing it all the time like you know you I noticed you notice it when you get on a train and now I'm a little bit older like I get on a train and if I'm sitting in a fo like the sitting in a four seater and someone's straight um behaving strangely I watch the young girls come and sit with me you know because they want to they they feel close they feel safe when they're with uh with a woman um and yeah uh but no I and Arya the inability of the government to uh acknowledge and address what's going on it's it's heartbreaking like you know it those deaths that happened i in Sydney around the time you know with the king hitting stuff and the response to that was so immediate and swift and those deaths were tragedies too but like that they're nothing in compar they're nothing in comparison to what women are going through all the time and you know and I it's it's tricky too because like I'm a privileged white woman and it again it's even worse and very different for women of colour and women with less privilege than I have. So um yeah it's um it's not an easy thing to talk about and it's not an easy thing to fix, you know, but I um I I do think that what we see in the violence that was implicit during the witch hunts has kind of carried through. I think we need to understand that we're at the very early stages of feminism like we think that it's you know this established whatever fourth, fifth wave we're in now, you know, intersectional feminism but we're we're only a hundred years on from getting the right to vote. And that that's not long. You know, that's we're only 50 years on from equal pay being passed and uh you see you know me too was 10 years ago and the pushback against that from certain corners of society, including women female leaders like Pauline Hansen is ridiculous. And it is um is deeply disturbing trying like this this desire and need to suppress women all the time and to make us feel like the things that we are that I believe are our strengths need to be kind of pushed aside and if you want to advance in society you need to behave like a man. You know um so really yeah so anyway that's a that was a whole soup of ideas. I apologise. No we welcome with delicious soups of ideas here it's keeping my answers to see no your audience is riveted.

King James, Bacon, And Dominating Nature

AJ 39:30

I was thinking about a story I heard on a 7am podcast actually here in Australia of of an indigenous community in Burke that apparently has had success in reducing domestic violence of this nature and at the heart of it was community leading it. So no surprises but just to emphasize that point yeah yeah listen to the people listen to you and the experiences you've just been outlining here and and in inform how we're trying to grapple with these things that way.

Lucianne 40:03

Yeah I think it's really important and also I think you know when we talk about feminine power and like you know male violence is a symptom of male men that are hurting and men that are not well and men that need help. And I think that's why when we have these conversations we also have to be better at talking about you know it's not just about it's how do we give them some of that feminine energy that's nurturing and balancing and um empowering and you know lets you talk about your feelings lets you develop friendships so that you can rely on other people like alleviate some of the pressures that can fall on a man's shoulders and you know alleviate some of the loneliness that happens when you don't allow yourself to you know form those kind of close friendships and maintain them the way that women are encouraged and well it's you know innate in us to kind of do.

AJ 40:56

Yeah. This is why I I didn't say flippantly that I I mean I wished I had read a book like yours when I was 15 because that's what I was feeling and and my education bless blessed the largely male teachers for at this boys college for trying to do some education on this front but really just almost zero almost zero Lucianne and and it did leave me floundering. And then I grow up to find out there's a male suicide epidemic in Australia the richest society that's ever lived and I don't I don't feel so alone with that but terribly so like and this is still true. So yeah it it emphasizes everything that there is this is not this is not an adversarial uh agenda this this is for everyone. I hope so I hope that that's thank you yeah that's how I I mean you know it I know the men don't come off the best in a book but it's a bit of suck it up no yeah well I mean I don't know that that's not no but yeah a little bit oh it's everything our our 12 year old boy has been taught for years it's like when you get it wrong own it yeah uh and then and then of course yeah bit motivated by everything else you know that I'm feeling around um yeah equal amounts of fury at it and loss yeah what you also observed of course is in and it was as much in a recent substack piece you wrote which was titled Men Are Calling Powerful Women Witches again. And of course in a way this isn't surprising because we'll remember Julia Gellard our first female prime minister getting this stuff and what's that now? That's geez 15 years ago? It's a long time ago yeah but it's coming out again to uh yeah certainly Victorian now ex-premier has resigned and sure there's a bigger context to to the political leanings and and uh and fates but that this was part of it tells you something yeah and and not only those quarters huh like media as well women in media it is rife right now yeah I and I I think that we see that I mean we see the archetypes kind of rear their heads when um anytime that this current paradigm wants to kind of clamp down and make everyone stay, you know, keep maintain their positions.

Lucianne 43:25

And so we see kind of the advocates for women belonging in the home kind of come out of the woodwork. So trad wives you know you see it in in the States Pauline Hansen's rhetoric isn't quite so explicit but it's implicit in you know this kind of attitude of they get pregnant because they want the money, you know, why would they need paid maternity leave? You're not at work why would you get paid like that kind of um that is the premise underlying that is get married and your husband will take care of you and then you know just deal with it. And of course in America it's much more explicit than that with you know Trump and JD Vance um and uh advocating for a return to the traditional family unit. So uh so I think there's that side of it. And then the flip side also is like get her back in her box. We don't like this woman. We want her to shut up. Um, and we we want to deride her power basically or take her power away, and uh which which uh remains an effective way to do that. There was one comment on the Guardian article, actually, where a woman uh said that she views being called a witch as like a symbol of being a powerful woman, and so that you know, she was like, I would wear it with pride. And I I am I'm totally sympathetic to that. I'm meeting women all the time now who I tell I've written this book about witches who tell me they're witches. You know, the I reckon 80% of the women I've talked to about the book um think they're witches, and they are proud to to have that title. But there's two things going on. Like A, it was very dangerous to be a witch um you know, during the witch hunts. When you got called a witch, your life was on the line. It was not a it was not um something to be proud of, it was very scary. And so there's that, and then it's like they're not wielding, they're not calling Jacinta Allen a witch because they think she's like glamorous and powerful, and you know, they're calling her a witch because they want people to dislike her and um and they want her that it it's a slur, basically, when it's used in that context. So yeah, it's not a it's an interesting moment, I think, too, because the world is on fire, literally. We are we have climate change is here, the consequences of global warming are here. We are seeing extreme heat stress all over the world. It is the deadliest uh global, it is the dead deadliest weather-related event. Um, and we're in addition to that, Europe's on fire. You know, we've experienced, I don't know how many once-in-a-generation floods in Australia recently, like it is the consequences of global warming have arrived faster than the scientists predicted they would, and they are accelerating faster than the scientists predicted that they would. And rather than everybody going, okay, we get it, it's time. Now we're gonna get off fossil fuels, we're gonna stop burning coal, we're gonna do the things the scientists have been telling us to do to stop all of these catastrophes from arriving. I mean, it's incredible that we still haven't managed to. Um, you then you see these ideas come up again. And so one of the things I realized when I was writing the book was that the the far right playbook is the same now as it was during the witch hunts. So King James playbook and the far right playbook today are the same. Scapegoat and Imagined Enemy, of course, King for King Get James it was witches, now it's immigrants. Exploit the environment at all costs, women belong in the home, and effective propaganda. And it's really just like they've been using it. This it's this it works. They've been using it for 400 years. And yeah, yeah.

AJ 47:06

But I think it I think it partly works because it's uh it's the unseen, it's the cultural substrate, it's the unseen story we live out of. Yeah. And so when we come to see it, at least there's the prospect of yeah, recognizing exactly what you've just said. You know, you mentioned the word progress earlier in our conversation in a in a sort of a fleeting way, and and giving some grace way. Yes, we're talking over the internet and and you flew to those places that yeah, etc. So yes, yes, yes. But if we're to integrate and make it gains worth living with

Feminine Power, Men, And Violence Today

AJ 47:40

still and able to be lived with still in a some kind of um a society that uh can regenerate itself, the notion of progress is born of that, Lucien, no, where you just ended, it's born of that very directly. And in a way, it's it's a term, you know, that perhaps we do actually stare down and say, no. I know it's sort of generally meant without this baggage, but I think it still inevitably carries it. It's just with the unseen story that comes with it. And I say, as a point of contrast, for example, and you you related a bunch of this stuff in your book as well, what came to mind was another person, uh a brilliant woman I long admired, who passed away a few years ago at age 92 or something. So you lived a great life, Hazel Henderson. And she was the one who's informed people like Kate Rayworth and Catherine Trebek now with well-being economy stuff or um or donut economy in Kate's terms, is essentially the idea that the economy that apparently can grow forever is not even a goal worth aiming for, let alone a possibility. It is based on everything you've described, and of course, that notion of progress is lockstep with it. So sh Hazel Henderson called called for, and indeed you know, worked in it for all her life, the love economy, with express reference to all the things that you talk about that were stripped of value. Interesting. The work at the home, the childbearing, the caring of the home, the healing of the sick, the gardening, the tending of all these aspects that we just stripped of any uh recognized value. I say we, you know, this the culture that came in the wake of this, stripped of any recognized value because the real work was done elsewhere. So on that front, I think it's probably we do need to just say on, yep, we are shifting paradigm. A shift in paradigm is is required here. We can't say, yeah, okay, keep progress and economy going, uh, but let's get women right or the environment right or whatever.

Lucianne 49:47

No, no. It's I and I I mean we can go, I think it's kind of good to go, all right. Look, progress isn't isn't a dirty word. It got us this far. It's brought us a lot of good. Modern medicine, germ theory, you know, like laboratory science, like airplane travel, the internet, the telephone, whatever it is. So that's all good. So we're here now. Now we know better. Now we're we're seeing the limits to what happens when we keep burning coal and oil and gas. We're seeing the limits to, you know, being so disconnected from our food system that we're producing too much food, but still there's people in the world going hungry. Like it's uh and we can apply, um, we can look to the love economy. I love the sound of this, and I wish I had read it before I'd written my book. Uh you know, we can and and figure out a way that's better to go forward because it makes no sense when we live Australia's a great example. This is a very, very rich country, and uh still the majority of the people here feel like they're doing it tough. Yeah. And that's fucked.

AJ 50:46

Like I've always thought that. Like, what's with the Aussie battler? How can we possibly be battling and accept that as normal?

Lucianne 50:53

No, it doesn't, it makes absolutely no sense in a country this rich that so much of the population feels like it feels like they're doing it so hard. And um, my brother with their PhD, he lives in Norway. He married into he married a Norwegian, beautiful Norwegian lady. And um, I spent a lot of time there. And guess what? Everybody there feels really rich because they properly tax their gas exports. And you know, it's socialism in this way where um everybody is being taken care of, and that is very witchy. You know, there is something to that, and very gen, you know, there's like a generosity to the idea that everybody should have enough. That needs to be at the heart of these systems. Plus also, of course, their matern their you know, parental leave is very, very generous and their healthcare and all of these other things, um, you know, universities free, for example.

AJ 51:43

Um Well, used to be here too, and this is this is the thing. I mean, you talk about traditional uh roles and so forth, you know, that view. If you go back those, you know, preceding the witch hunts, traditional roles looked different. And you go back to only the 80s and education was free in this country too. I it's just the idea that there's a certain something's got a particular lock on tradition, is just again, whatever your your lens is.

Lucianne 52:10

Yeah, 100% agree.

AJ 52:13

So you have observed an enormous sweeping change though, no? Like things are shifting on this front in terms of women coming onto this power again. And and I guess, I guess despite all we've talked about, the undercurrent shifting.

Lucianne 52:27

I hope so. I I think that I hope so. Um I I feel like there's yeah, the women's response, the kind of delight in the idea of being a witch. There's something in that. I think there's something in, you know, the wanting to connect with the body, wanting to connect with the natural world, wanting to connect with each other, which uh witchcraft is an avenue for all of that as well. But you know, these are kind of we're up against such big and powerful forces who are doubling down. And I maybe it's Hannah. Please, maybe it's Hannah. But we I don't know. I I can see the value and the power in us all kind of reclaiming this kind of femininity and leaning into it and um as a starting point and you know, beginning to have those conversations about community and beginning to try to structure our lives in different ways. Um, but uh, you know, this is uh these are newer ideas. I mean, then they're not because Caroline Merchant and Sylvia Federici have been talking about them for a long time, but they're I feel like they're new ideas to be entering the mainstream zeitgeist. And I, you know, um Sarah Wilson is talking about systems collapse. Like we are at this point where we know that everybody knows that we need to be reaching out for something different, but I don't I don't like I don't pretend I'm a fashion editor. I just help them to write this book. I don't know what that new social system looks like. I I feel like part of it will be where we're going. Unfortunately, part of it is going to be driven by isolationism in response to catastrophes like climate change and um worsening global conflicts. Um, you know, and that's a kind of sad thing that that our return to kind of individual and to community and will be driven by isolationism in part, I think, but maybe there'll be something beautiful and powerful that comes out of that. Obviously, we see it happening in regenerative agriculture when I visit farms. You know, these there's wonderful kind of communities. And I was lucky when I was doing the book that I got to visit some of the communities who are putting these things into action. But a lot of them, at least one anyway, like when I went to visit um, I've forgotten the name of the farm, uh, Olivia Giulioli's farm in um Italy, in Umbria, when I went to visit them,

Witch As A Slur And A Playbook

Lucianne 54:50

they, you know, she used to do global advocacy. She used to be a global advocate for sustainable business, and she used to be at, you know, global summits, conferences, um, Davos, you know, go going toe-to-toe with ministers advocating for change. And then she just realized that, uh, and she's not the only one that I've spoken to, but many of the people that I deal with in my work as a sustainability journalist, they feel fed up by the how entrenched the systems are, how good the fossil fuel lobbies are at infiltrating sustainability summits, how good they are at muddying the science. So we end up fighting amongst ourselves instead of um getting figuring out how we like get polyester out of the fashion industry. And, you know, so and their response is to go hyperlocal, and to her response anyway, at least, is to try to change from the community level up. And of course that's very powerful, but but and that's necessary. I don't think that we can really do it in another way, but that's a long road. It's a slow road if we're starting, you know, one one community at a time. Um I mean, it probably is fun for the beginning, but but if we're talking about um, and maybe that is um, it's probably grassroots is the best way to change the world at this point.

AJ 56:03

Yeah, yeah. And again, I like to think all of the above, basically. Go Hannah contesting the seat against the Prime Minister as well.

Lucianne 56:11

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

AJ 56:13

You have also found it was telling to me, because you know, I'm sharing the story a bit with my wife as I go, and uh she'll be the next one to read it, probably, Lucianne. That obviously there's the dark bits that are that are tough going, but it was telling that you seem to emerge with I guess the sense of re-enchantment that you're calling for yourself, would you say?

Lucianne 56:38

Yeah, I I I think I hope so. I mean, there's a sense when when you go looking at for the science about how much we need nature, it's undeniable. You know, we like our bodies respond so positively to time in the ocean, time in forests, even time looking at water, at bodies of water. Like it is we you know, we need sunshine on our skin. It helps we need to walk barefoot on barefoot on the on the on the earth because it helps regulate our sleep patterns. Like it's we need to be eating food that's grown in healthy soils. Like we are gardeners have healthier guts and better mental health than most other people because they've got their hands in the soil all the time. Like it is, um, and that to me is also patent. And like I think that when we can, as uh people who work in sustainability, rather than get stuck talking about metrics like carbon or eutrophication that people have no emotional connection to, we do a much better job when we can actually make it very real and very visceral for people and very, you know, palpable uh in in terms of how this stuff impacts their well-being. And we've got our work cut out for us because now not only are we living too much in our minds and you know, our consciousness we feel like is so driven by the brain, which isn't true. Like there's research that shows now so much of our consciousness actually resides in the body. But because we spend so much time looking at screens, we're living in an extension of our brain all the time, which is not well, like it's not. And I think people's desire to like get off the phone and get on or get away from their screens, even though we're also addicted, is another there are little spots of hope because you know, we're res humans are we're resilient. And even though we're quite stupid, we do manage to figure stuff out. Um, although, you know, one could argue not when we continue to trash the uh the planet. But um, but no, of course there are moments of hope. And I and and for me too, it's like a little awakening, you know, when you spend time talking to regenerative farmers, which I was doing for like the last kind of four years, and they just believe in nature so much. It's they're like, you know, nature does it for you, just put it all the things in place and get out of the way. Like uh stop spraying chemicals on the ground and killing your own soil.

AJ 58:59

Yeah. Um extension. Yeah.

Lucianne 59:02

Yeah, totally. I mean, just yeah. So so there is a lot of hope and there's a lot of knowledge in in in there too. I just um I do think we can't be naive about what we're up against.

AJ 59:12

Yeah, right. It was telling that Sylvia Federici said something like, uh, magic is an instrument of grassroots resistance to power and and referring to this stuff. And uh and it occurs to me across all the stories that I hear as well that you talk about getting out of the way. The wind is at our back. If we can like it is a power, it does put the wind at your back.

Lucianne 59:36

That's good. That's that's true. I maybe I should have that tattooed somewhere on me. So when someone says is there hope instead of going, oh, okay. No, we've got nature on our side, of course there's hope. Um, yeah, but you are right. And I do, and I think that um, you know, when you give people permission to say, like when I'm talking about magic and I'm an and I'm talking about enchantment, I'm just talking about how beautiful the natural world is. When I'm talking about belief in a higher power, sure there's a supernatural element to it, but it's not about spells or the occult. It is literally about go out there and stare at the ocean and see how powerful that is, you know, or like, you know, catching a rainbow when you're like out the window, or even just um, you know, there are little I love rainbow lorikeets. Like every time I see a rainbow lorikeet just like darting around the suburbs, it gives me a real thrill. Like these the the small things that are um r remind us that the world is a magical place, um, I think uh that's it's all an avenue back to, you know, change, systems change, I hope.

AJ 1:00:40

Right. Yeah, I think so. I think it is much because it it only came up on the podcast. When was it? A couple of weeks ago, I think. The the planet's blue zones, you know, where people live the longest and oh yeah, vivacious lives. And when I was reading some of the vision in the book, I was just thinking of those places. Like we know and love these places. It's it's not beyond us. I want to close, if we can, Lucianne, with reference to your ancestors that indeed were very present for you in the writing of the book, which is part of the reenchantment you're talking about. And again, it's what I hear all the time. It's become so front and center. How was that for you, feeling those presences?

Lucianne 1:01:21

Um well, I it was so I never met my grandma on my mum's side. She died when my mum was really young, but uh she was an actress and a very um she had a hot temper, I think we're probably very similar in lots of ways. She also used to, she lived in London and she wrote for fashion magazines. Um and oh wow, she so I wrote the book at my mum's house, and my mum's house is full of books, and most of them were every time I needed like this, is also a privilege, I I realize, you know, Shakespeare, or like an early edition of The Brothers Grim. Like it was, you know, I just had to like go like looking at at the shelves around the house and I could and pull pull them down. Like it was I had a wealth of information at my fingertips.

Hope Through Community And Reconnection

Lucianne 1:02:10

And every time I would open one of those books, they were usually a gift from um either my grandmother or my great-grandmother to my mum. Yeah. And so there was something to me that felt very like that that something very powerful in in that lineage, and I feel very lucky to be um part of of that of that lineage. Um and yeah, uh, you know, and the the the traveling around and the and the creativity that is on all sides of my family. Everybody has been um nomadic and for except for my my parents are both creative, but they're academic um and settled. They don't definitely weren't kind of roaming around, which um both my grandparents on both sides of my family and my great grandparents did as well. So yeah, so it's no, it's been it's interesting the the ties, but also, you know, I'm a white Australian. Like we came here, my family came here on the first fleet on both sides of the family, except for for one great-grandfather. And so I, you know, Lancaster, where I went in England to look at those witches, they sent people out to Australia, they sent convicts out to Australia from those places. So I don't believe that I'm descendant from the witches I was looking at, but I certainly felt like I was revisiting something that was in my um in my heritage, like as far, you know, as far back as you can kind of go. And we've got we've got a duty to do that as um, you know, the beneficiaries of colonization. We have a duty to go back and try to figure out what our relationship was like to the land and what it would be like if we were if we felt like this sense of immense responsibility for the land, as say, you know, Indigenous Australians do. It's time for us to understand that we have in our histories different belief systems that could show us different ways and to go and figure out what that looks like.

AJ 1:04:13

Couldn't have said it better. It's everything that I've come to through my journey as well, Lucien. To close, let's talk music. What music has been sort of central either to this journey, potentially, even or your life more broadly.

Lucianne 1:04:29

Oh music. I mean, so I I'm I'm all I can think right now is I'm just listening to Charlie XCX's new album, basically on repeat. So I don't know if you've listened to it yet, it's really good. Um she's gone a step away a little bit from like dance floor music and it's got more rock and roll in it, which is which speaks to my like my I spent most of my 20s in dive fast listening to my friends playing their bands. So it speaks to something about um something in me from a different time. But I also have a playlist, um, a witch playlist on my phone at the moment, too, because it's it's quite um, you know, this period when you're promoting a book like this, I think we talked about it before, you're a little bit vulnerable. And I've got just like a lot of like very witchy songs being sung by very powerful women that I um am listening to when I need to get geared up for the things.

AJ 1:05:20

That's brilliant. What's on it? Do we have a sense of what's on it?

Lucianne 1:05:23

Uh so I'm Florence Welch, um, Florence and the Machine. So her latest album was very witchy. There's some more Charlie X on there. There's um Nina Simone, I put a spell on you. What else is on there? The charmed themed song is on there, which is the Smiths. Um, yeah, you have the sense. It's it's a lot of girl pop, but in a good way.

AJ 1:05:42

Yeah. Yeah, I like some of that partial to that too. I'm really thinking of you as you embark on your little tour to series of events around the country. And indeed, with that sense of vulnerability even as well as power, because they're probably not separate either. So yeah, good luck with those and thanks a

Ancestors, Colonisation, And Land Relationship

AJ 1:06:00

lot, Lucianne. It's been brilliant reading your work and speaking with you.

Lucianne 1:06:03

Well, thank you so much. You know, it's been a pleasure. You've read the text so closely. It's such a privilege to have a conversation with somebody who's so engaged by it. So thank you.

AJ 1:06:12

That was Lucianne Tonti, author of the new book Good Witch, In Search of Our Lost Feminine Power, published by Summit Books. Lucianne is also progressively sharing other snippets of her journeys from Good Witch with photos on her Substack called The Line. And she'll be guesting at a series of live events over the next couple of weeks. All links in the show notes. If you're enjoying the podcast, I hope you'll consider becoming a paid subscriber on Patreon or Substack for some writing from me too. This episode was only possible with your support, so thanks very much, Caleb Schwartz, for becoming a new paid subscriber on Substack. Nice learning of your stack too, and thanks too for getting your application for the next Confluence River Journey in. Look forward to hearing about your ag work in the NT. And thank you all for sharing, rating, and reviewing the podcast. The music you're hearing is Regeneration by Amelia Barden, and at the top was Silhouettes by Muted, sourced from Artlist. My name's Anthony James. Thanks for listening

Music, Witch Playlist, And Farewell

AJ 1:07:21

.