Episode Ninety-Eight: The Byte: Cory Thomas Hutchison

For Cory, it's all magic all the time! This bestselling author of New World Witchery has had many experiences-from his mother visiting after her death, to that thing that happened in the woods that one time.

Transcript

Hello everyone,

And welcome to episode 98 of Bite-Sized Blessings.

It's December and I've been a little erratic with the release of the podcast.

And I'm taking a little time trying to relax,

Trying to enjoy the season.

I'm doing some traveling.

And so for the month of December,

The podcasts are going to come out a little bit willy nilly.

And so for those of you who have been counting on them on Sundays,

I do apologize,

But I've got some great guests coming up,

I think for episode 100,

I'm going to have a dear friend interview me because I do have some stories to tell.

And so,

Yes,

We're so very close to 100.

So very close.

However,

We're here to talk about episode 98,

This episode right here.

And in this episode,

I get to interview Corey Thomas Hutchinson.

And so I found Corey because I was at my favorite,

Favorite bookstore here in Santa Fe,

Found his best-selling book,

New World Witchery,

A Trove of North American Folk Magic.

Corey is a fascinating human being.

He's a folklorist who studies folk belief,

Folk magic,

Holidays,

Festivals,

Play,

And games among many other topics.

He's also written and published extensively,

Including that aforementioned amazing book,

But he's had articles published in Midwestern Folklore,

The Journal of Contemporary Legends,

And Children's Folklore Review.

He's also written for many other non-academic outlets.

He's taught courses in writing and composition at Penn State Harrisburg and Kutztown University,

As well as classes in folklore,

Popular culture,

American studies,

And speech communication.

And he received his doctorate from Penn State in 2018 for his dissertation work on the Philadelphia Parade of Spirits.

He has so much going on,

Including,

Including,

If you can believe it,

He's the co-host of a podcast,

New World Witchery,

Which explores North American folk magical traditions.

And so what I really appreciate about his book,

His book really goes into the history,

The folklore,

The enchanting intelligence of local communities,

As far as magic,

Popular belief stories,

And magical workings,

Magical places in the United States.

It's a nonfiction,

It's very informative,

And it's very historical.

So I urge everyone listening to the podcast,

If you are interested in a deep dive into the history,

Into the stories of North American magic,

Check his book out.

So now without further ado,

Episode 98 of Bite-Sized Blessings.

I was going to go out there and kind of prepare this sort of like fire and the space,

Get the fire ready to light and everything and prepare the space.

And I was going to go do all that.

And my partner was going to wave the edge of the forest.

And I was going to come back and get her.

And I was like,

This will take me like 10 minutes to get there,

Put the stuff together,

Come back.

Well,

I went in there and did the things and took me a little longer than I was expecting to,

But there was definitely like this different pressure in the air.

It just felt a little different.

There'd be little ripples of wind and things like that.

And very weird.

And so then I came back out and she was like,

Where were you?

Like,

What?

I've been gone like 15 minutes.

I'm sorry.

It was a little longer.

It's been three hours and we had lost,

I had lost all the time in there.

I mean,

There's a lot,

There's been a lot of kind of magical moments in my life,

I'll tell you,

Like one of the ones that really stuck with me.

And it,

It,

I don't even know where to categorize it,

But it was very profound for me.

I mentioned that my mom had passed away.

Um,

And you know,

Several years later,

After I'd been to Prague and kind of moved back and everything,

Um,

I was kind of coming back to this,

You know,

Um,

Sort of folk magical approach to things.

And some of that involves kind of making contact with ancestors.

There's a lot of ancestral work and things like that.

And so I'd set up a little ancestor altar who'd had her old writing desk and that was in our living room.

And I put up a little candle for her and a little statue of Mary that she liked,

Um,

And had,

Um,

A little bit of dirt from her,

Her grave as well.

But I just kind of kept there on the shelf and I just kind of established this whole thing and put it there and just sort of said,

Well,

Okay,

Mom,

You've got a home within my home.

You're here.

If you want to be here.

And.

It was either that night or within like two or three nights,

Um,

I was falling asleep and the,

The living room,

There was like,

There's like a,

The living room and then there's a long hallway and then there's the bedroom where I sleep and I was laying down and normally the bedroom door is closed.

In fact,

It was closed even that night.

And I was in this kind of like,

You know,

The hypnagogic state,

That sort of medium state between sleep and awake.

And I also got this really strong impression.

There was something down the hall.

There's something down the hall and around the corner.

And so it kind of half opened my eyes.

The door was open and I felt the impression of something kind of coming down the hall toward me.

And it wasn't,

I mean,

There's,

This is the beginning of a horror film as much as it's anything,

But.

It wasn't that it wasn't that feeling.

It was this feeling of like,

Something's coming in here,

But it's very familiar,

Very familiar,

And I was kind of laying there and all of a sudden I felt my hair.

Moving on my forehead,

Being brushed aside.

And I knew instantly I could smell,

I could feel the texture of fingertips.

And I knew it was my mom and she was there for that moment.

And it was this reconnection,

You know,

Almost 10 years after she passed,

Where I was like,

Oh,

You,

That really worked out.

You're really here.

Um,

I'm going to do what I can to make sure that you're comfortable and that,

You know,

You can be in this home where now you have grandchildren that you didn't get to meet in life,

But gosh,

You have a chance to meet your family.

Gosh,

You have a chance to kind of be around them now.

And it was a very profound experience.

And it made me very aware of like how important this relationships,

Um,

With the spiritual world,

But also,

You know,

With the people that we have in this life too,

Are in this sort of like,

Let's cultivate these connections.

Um,

So that we do have memories that we can leave memories behind that.

Can,

Can be our placeholders that can be the bookmark,

Right?

The bookmark at our mouth,

Um,

They can hold our place in the world.

And I should say,

Like I've had dreams.

If you've ever lost somebody close to you,

You have dreams sometimes where they'll show back up.

And I remember having one where,

Um,

She,

You know,

We,

I was back in the house where I had grown up with her.

Um,

And she was just in another room and I went in the stars like,

Oh mom,

I thought you were dead.

And she said,

No,

No,

It was,

Uh,

I just had to go away for a while,

But I'm back now,

Um,

And we had a long conversation.

It was really beautiful.

And then I woke up and for this first 10,

15 seconds,

I was like,

Oh good.

She's alive.

Everything's fine.

And then you lose them all over again.

And that's a very painful grieving process thing that happens.

But this experience with her coming into the room after the setting of the ancestor space made me realize,

Oh,

That dream conversation still has value.

There's still,

It was still a chance to talk to her.

It was still a chance to sit in and be with her in that moment.

And so it's made me value those moments where even if I am in a dream with her,

And even if I have to go through that loss again,

It still feels like communion with her and that is a powerful thing for me.

So that definitely has had a lasting impact on me.

And I would call that.

It's something magical for sure.

Definitely an enchanted moment.

Wow.

Um,

You know,

I have had people who have passed and I've had those dreams that you're talking about and it's so comforting to see them again.

Inside the dream.

It's,

It's such a re a reunion.

I mean,

The feeling is so beautiful and blissful to see them again.

Reconnect,

You know,

Have a conversation or,

Or just be in their presence or,

Or kind of just have them tell you that they're okay.

You know that they're okay.

And you're going to be okay.

I mean,

Those are,

Are my experiences,

But it's really beautiful.

You know,

I talk,

I have talked before in this podcast about that,

That kind of liminal space in between being asleep and being awake.

You're like half aware.

It's this kind of this twilight that you're inhabiting and it's so powerful and in such a place of magic,

I found where so many delicious things can happen.

And,

Um,

I just love that your experience,

You know,

Happens in that state because I don't know if everybody experiences that state between being awake and being asleep.

I don't know if,

I don't know if everybody experiences it so profoundly as you and I have,

But it is,

I do hope,

I do wish that state at least once for everybody's life,

Because it's,

It is this place of magic.

That's so beautiful and powerful.

So it's kind of exciting that you've experienced it.

I,

It's beautiful.

It's a wonderful space to be in.

I know.

Definite magic.

It's funny.

Like,

I really think like,

You know,

In the study of,

You know,

The sort of folklore and folk magic,

It is funny how often folk spells will depend upon you doing something kind of to your bed or in your bed so that you can have a dream that gives you something,

Gives you information,

Gives you a connection.

It's a very,

You know,

There's absolutely this sort of sense,

Like your,

Your relationship between the sleep and the waking world is bridged by that space,

That bed space.

And that is a magical space.

It is its own liminal space.

So I really like your kind of framing of that.

Gosh,

I did not,

I was not aware of that,

That,

That so many folk spells dealt with that space.

And,

And that's actually fascinating.

Yeah.

There's,

There's one where like you put,

If you go to a wedding,

You can take a piece of wedding cake.

I would assume you would wrap it up really well and stick it under your pillow and you'll dream of like a future spouse or a future lover.

Right.

Definitely wrap it.

Cause unless you really want to do the sheets the next day,

It's going to get messy.

So there's all kinds of stuff like that,

Or like,

You know,

Putting a Bible verse under your pillow and that kind of can bring visions of somebody that you're going to be with.

You know,

Even beyond the kind of dreaming component of it,

Like you try the child birthing bed used to be,

You know,

I think you'd have your child birth in the bed and they put sharp objects underneath the bed so that we cut the pain of the child birth.

So there's definitely a sense of like the bed is magical.

If you've ever seen the old movie bed,

Knobs and broomsticks,

The bed is always very magical.

You just,

You just have to know how to enchant.

The thing that I learned from that was like,

There's,

There's definitely kind of a beginner's luck component to some of your early magic that you do.

And after that,

It expects you to do some work because I've tried to do workings where like,

I was sort of like,

Let's just,

You know,

Try to do this thing off the cuff really quickly.

And I didn't do a lot of maintenance with it.

Didn't put effort into it.

Those don't work out.

Those usually are they'll fizzle or fail in some spectacularly weird way.

And so that taught me like,

Oh,

If you're going to do,

You know,

A candle working,

You need to stick with it,

Right?

You got to stick with that for the multiple days that you're going to work with it.

And maybe that's just kind of training your mind to expect that the wonder or to,

To put some wonder out there from yourself.

I don't know,

But if you do put in the effort,

I have noticed there does seem to be a return on that,

Which is nice.

So yeah,

Lots of little miracles,

Little magical moments.

Just kind of,

You know,

These elements of wonder.

I remember one.

Okay.

This is going to be totally.

This is a wild story and people have heard my podcast are going to edit story,

But I've got to share,

I got to share this.

I hope it's okay.

It's a little long,

Not super long.

It's a little long.

So my podcast partner and I,

We sometimes will do workings together,

Rituals and magic and workings together.

And there was one time we had found this old stone chimney out in the middle of the woods from a house.

It was an old house that had basically been not torn down.

It just collapsed every time it had a well,

Like you could,

If you weren't careful,

You could fall into the well and there was a stone chimney and there were four corner blocks and some pieces of the walls,

But that was it.

That was all that was left of it.

And we're like,

Well,

This seems very witchy.

Let's do magic here.

And so we would go out there and work,

But the problem is it was kind of out in the middle,

Like there wasn't a path to it.

You really kind of were trailblazing yourself out there through a bunch of beautiful periwinkle,

All that was carpeting the forest floor.

There's probably poison ivy in there and stuff too,

But we were trying to avoid that gorgeous,

You know,

But definitely wild animals and things like that,

That lived out there.

And so there was some risk involved in going out there.

Well,

Well,

We went one time we,

I was going to go out there and kind of prepare this sort of like fire and the space,

Get the fire ready to light and everything and prepare the space.

And I was going to go do all that.

And my partner was going to wave the edge of the forest.

And I was going to come back and get her.

And I was like,

This will take me like 10 minutes to get there,

Put the stuff together,

Come back.

Well,

I went in there and did the things and took me a little longer than I was expecting to,

But there was definitely like this different pressure in the air.

It just felt a little different.

There'd be little ripples of wind and things like that.

And very weird.

And so then I came back out and she was like,

Where were you?

Like,

What?

I've been gone like 15 minutes.

I'm sorry.

It was a little longer.

It's like,

It's been three hours and we had lost,

I had lost all the time in there just from this weird kind of fairy liminal space.

And then,

So we decided,

Okay,

Let's go in,

Let's go ahead and go to this thing.

Get this done.

Well,

We get in there and suddenly we get lost.

Cause again,

No clear cut path.

We're looking around.

We're looking around.

Like,

How do we get back to this space?

Um,

And we couldn't figure out how to get there.

And so finally we're like,

Okay,

Let's shut off the flashlight and ask for some guidance.

Let's see if we can call on some spirits to bring us some guidance.

And we're in the middle of this kind of stand of periwinkle woods all around us.

We,

You know,

We're there,

We show us the light where the lights off for maybe two,

Three minutes as we're kind of doing this little,

Like under our breath,

Chanting,

Asking for guidance and help to find the,

The,

The stone house is what we're calling it,

The stone house for this.

And so,

Okay,

Let's turn the light back on.

We clicked the light back on and there is an animal about three and a half,

Four feet tall,

Standing maybe five feet away from us.

And first I'm like,

It's a coyote.

And I jump in front of my partner and start like making this crazy noise.

It's like,

I'm trying to scare it off.

And that's when we kind of both process.

Oh no,

This is a deer.

There's a,

It's a small deer.

And the fact that this thing did not immediately run away when I did that is shocking enough,

But then it kind of looked at us,

Turn around and started walking and we followed it and it led us right to the stone house where we were supposed to go do our ritual and our working.

And then as soon as we got there,

Just kind of walked away off into the woods.

And that was it.

And we were like,

What,

What we,

We just led by like a spirit deer to the space.

Like that was the most literal,

Like we need a guide.

Oh,

You got,

And the fact that the deer kind of looked at us like we were idiots when we turned the light back on,

Like you asked me to be here.

Why are you acting like a total fool?

Yelling at me.

I don't get paid enough for this.

And it's like,

Amazing moment.

Amazing moment.

We'll live with me until the end of my days.

Love that moment.

Thank you so much for listening to this episode of bite-sized blessings.

I need to thank my magical and enchanting guest,

Corey Thomas Hutchinson for agreeing to share his stories,

Tell of magics and enchantments that have happened in his life and for educating me a little bit more about what magic can look like in this day and age.

If you'd like to find out more about this intelligent and prolific guest,

Please,

Please click the link under the episodes show notes.

Also go to the treasures page on my website,

And you'll be able to click on the link under his book to purchase it right there.

And then I need to thank the creators of the music used for this episode.

Taiga Sound Productions,

Alexander Nakarada,

Music L Files,

Kevin McLeod,

John Bartman and Sasha End.

For complete attribution,

Please see the bite-sized blessings website at bite-sized blessings.

Com.

On the website,

You'll find links to playlists,

Art,

Change makers,

And of course,

Corey's book,

All of which I hope lighten and brighten your day.

Thank you for listening.

And here's my one request.

Be like Corey.

Understand,

Deeply comprehend that this world is in fact magical.

It's inherently enchanted.

Then go out and notice,

Go out and start a conversation,

Go out and witness that enchantment and that magic that's always,

Always,

Always eternally around you.