Hex and Muse
A podcast for the curious, the creative, and the quietly powerful.
Hex & Muse is a slow-burning exploration of modern mysticism, feminine power, and the spaces where history, art, and ritual entwine.
Hosted by a practicing witch, artist, and seeker, this show isn’t a how-to guide; it’s a breadcrumb trail.
Each episode invites you into a moment of reflection through storytelling, folklore, sacred practices, and the occasional deep-dive into witches in art, culture, and cinema.
From building altars and meeting goddesses, to walking ancestral paths and unearthing forgotten histories; this is a gathering for those who feel the hum of something more beneath the surface of things.
Come as you are.
Take what you need.
And from my altar to yours - welcome.
Hex and Muse
Mary Shelley - The Mother of Monsters
In this haunting and beautiful episode of Hex & Muse, we step into the storm that changed the world. Born of lightning and grief, Mary Shelley dreamt a monster into being and in doing so, gave birth to modern horror, science fiction, and a mirror for the human soul.
Through thunder over Lake Geneva, the ghost-story challenge at Villa Diodati, and the heartbreak that shaped Frankenstein, this episode traces how an eighteen-year-old woman stole fire from the gods and rewrote creation itself.
We explore her lineage daughter of revolutionaries, lover of poets, widow of fire and her quiet defiance in a world that feared the power of female imagination. Because Mary Shelley was never just the author of Frankenstein. She was the Modern Prometheus of gothic literature - the girl who gave the dark a heartbeat.
Featuring reflections on Guillermo del Toro’s forthcoming adaptation of Frankenstein, starring Jacob Elordi and Mia Goth.
⚡ Trigger Warning: This episode includes brief discussion of infant loss and grief, handled with tenderness and care.
✴︎ References & Further Reading
*Mary Shelley, * Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus (1818 & 1831 editions).
William Godwin -An Enquiry Concerning Political Justice (1793).
Mary Wollstonecraft - A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792).
Richard Holmes - Shelley: The Pursuit (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1974).
Miranda Seymour - Mary Shelley (John Murray, 2000).
Fiona Sampson - In Search of Mary Shelley: The Girl Who Wrote Frankenstein (Profile Books, 2018).
Anne K. Mellor - Mary Shelley: Her Life, Her Fiction, Her Monsters (Routledge, 1988).
Charlotte Gordon - Romantic Outlaws: The Extraordinary Lives of Mary Wollstonecraft and Mary Shelley (Random House, 2015).
Kathleen Stocking -The Villa Diodati Circle: Byron, Polidori, Shelley & the Birth of Frankenstein (Oxford Classics, 1999).
Frances Wilson - The Ballad of Dorothy Wordsworth (for context on the Romantic circle).
Guillermo del Toro - Frankenstein (Netflix / forthcoming, starring Jacob Elordi & Mia Goth).
For deeper gothic and Romantic context:
The British Library “Discovering Literature: Romantics & Victorians.”
The Morgan Library - Frankenstein Manuscripts Project.
The Romantic Circles Online Archive - University of Maryland.
Mary Shelley, Frankenstein, The Modern Prometheus, Romantic poets, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Lord Byron, John Polidori, Villa Diodati, Lake Geneva, gothic literature, science fiction origins, feminist writers, literary history, witchy podcast, Hex and Muse, women in literature, Guillermo del Toro Frankenstein, Jacob Elordi, Mia Goth, creative myth, female imagination, poetic storytelling, art and alchemy, haunting history, dark romanticism.
Hex & Muse is recorded on the lands of the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation. I pay my deepest respects to their Elders past and present - and to all First Nations people, whose stories and spirits continue to shape this land.
Follow along for more folklore, magic, and mythic musings:
Instagram: @hexandmuse
Website: www.hexandmuse.com
Hex & Muse is a spellbound journal of folklore, magic, art, and the sacred feminine - told through cinematic storytelling and whispered histories.
From my altar to yours… thank you for listening.
