Queer and Trans Witchcraft w/ Brooke Palmieri
/We’re joined this week by author and artist, Brooke Palmieri, to discuss his new book - Bargain Witch: Essays of Self-Initiation. We chat about holding onto your weirdness, the importance of astral hygiene, and how we used the Neopets roleplay forums as a way of exploring our ideal selves.
Content Warning: This episode contains conversations about or mentions of punishment, transphobia, bullying, religious persecution, doxxing, and sexual content.
Guest
Brooke Palmieri is a writer and artist working at the intersection of memory, history, and transsexual alternate realities. Brooke founded CAMP BOOKS to promote access to queer and trans history through rare archival materials, cheap zines, and sculptural installations. His book Bargain Witch: Essays in Self-Initiation is about witchcraft, heresy, and working in an occult bookstore in London, and comes out on DOPAMINE BOOKS in October 2025.
Housekeeping
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Cast & Crew
- Co-Hosts: Julia Schifini and Amanda McLoughlin
- Editor: Bren Frederick
- Music: Brandon Grugle, based on "Danger Storm" by Kevin MacLeod
- Artwork: Allyson Wakeman
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About Us
Spirits is a boozy podcast about mythology, legends, and folklore. Every episode, co-hosts Julia and Amanda mix a drink and discuss a new story or character from a wide range of places, eras, and cultures. Learn brand-new stories and enjoy retellings of your favorite myths, served over ice every week, on Spirits.
Transcript
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AMANDA: Welcome to Spirits Podcast, a boozy dive into mythology, legends and folklore. Every week, we pour a drink and learn about a new story from around the world. I'm Amanda.
JULIA: And I'm Julia.
AMANDA: And we are so excited to be joined today by author, artist, activist, it's Brooke Palmieri. Brooke, welcome to the show.
BROOKE: Hi. It's really lovely to be here. Thanks for inviting me.
JULIA: We're always so excited to talk to witches of any kind, any creed. But Brooke, I was particularly moved listening to you read from some of the essays from your upcoming book, Bargain Witch: Essays in Self-Initiation. But first, can you tell our audience a little bit about you, a little bit about your work, and where they can find the book when it comes out in October?
BROOKE: Well, thanks for being so excited. I— this is a subject near and dear to my heart, so I'm very excited to be with kindred spirits to talk about it.
AMANDA: Good pun. Good pun.
BROOKE: Oh, that's right. Now, I use spirits as such a common word in my vocabulary, I realize now in this context, it will always be a double entendre, so thank you.
JULIA: We picked you for a reason.
BROOKE: Yeah, very elastic word, very versatile word. So first things first, I guess something that comes from the very beginning of the book, that sort of writing the book helped me really clarify, even for myself, is that even though love of witches involves a love of fragmented evidence and mystery, and just not having all the answers, for me, like love of witches is also the greatest continuity of my life. It's something I've just been attracted and frightened of, and excited by witches since I was a child. And that led to, like, a very early self-initiation. And so what this— I guess how this book is structured is it's sort of part transsexual spiritual memoir. So what does it mean to be a queer and trans person searching for a definition of the divine that can contain myself and my experiences, on the one hand. And then the— like that kind of larger, maybe journey, I guess, is filtered through my experience working in an occult book shop. When I was living in London, I worked in a bookstore called Treadwell's, which was kind of a site of pilgrimage from—
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
BROOKE: —as you say, witches of all persuasions. So, like, it's— it involves a little bit of a deep dive into the history of the witch trials and the documents that we use to understand what witchcraft is historically over time. And it's a little bit spiritual memoir, and it's all just filtered through this kind of wacky, bizarre, and really wonderful experience I had working at Treadwell's, surrounded by people who cared about my spiritual well-being, surrounded by people for whom spiritual well-being was a daily practice. And then all of the, like, wild and wonderful and weird people that you meet when you're front of house in a bookshop specializing in spell— books about spells, and books about invoking demons, and books about the witch trials.
JULIA: I love a retail comedy on top of a spiritual journey, personally.
BROOKE: Yeah. And so it lets you also like— it lets me be playful with, like— with spirituality, which asks really serious questions, but also has a lot of really silly answers and silly manifestations to those questions. You can't take yourself too seriously when you are also, like, making kind of around a minimum wage on peddling these major— these grand philosophies that cut through what it means to be human across time, and, you know, concerns that have been a part of human culture for thousands of years. It's like— on the one hand, it's really grandiose, and on the other hand, it's really silly, because we're all just part of this little witch economy trying to get by in a world, in an expensive— in a, you know, world where the cost of living is rising.
JULIA: Yeah, yeah. So I— one of the things— I really want to talk about Treadwell's. I really want to talk about your experiences working in this bookshop. But one of the things we always like to ask and kind of start with as a foundation for any sort of spooky guest we have here on the podcast, is what spookiness and spirituality, and I guess witchcraft looked like for you in your childhood. And I know that from your talks, you talked about practicing witchcraft without realizing that's what it was. So I'd love to talk about, like, what that looked like for you, and also how hindsight sort of revealed like, "Oh, that's what that was this whole time."
AMANDA: Julia and I are also two former rock girls and—
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
AMANDA: —definitely loved doing the— sort of, like taking out the ancient Greek and Egyptian mythology books from our local library, and then, like, drawing our own playing cards for, you know, Hera and Aphrodite, et cetera. So we are very, you know, of the tribe, and would love to hear about your specific queer, witchy upbringing.
JULIA: I mean, if you weren't mixing potions in the mud during recess—
AMANDA: What were you doing?
JULIA: —What are we even doing here? What are we even doing here?
BROOKE: I know. It's true. I think something that came up for me when I was combing through my memories of my childhood is that, actually, all kids are weird.
JULIA: Yes.
BROOKE: And all kids have a kind of cobbled-together sense of spirituality through their exercises and imagination. It's just some of us are really lucky that we managed to hold on to our weirdness—
JULIA: Hmm.
BROOKE: —and that can— and that is something that we like— it just— for whatever reason, whatever constellation of personality traits and stubbornness that I had, I didn't let people punish the weirdness out of me as a kid. And I was punished in lots of ways, and restricted, and censored in lots of ways, like any— like a lot of people have an experience of. But, you know, I wasn't— I always felt really bad for the kids in my grade, in my classes, who were, like, classically very athletic and masculine, or very pretty and feminine, or really fit into, like, what a dominant culture wanted of them—
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
BROOKE: —in their childhood, because those kids got stripped of their weirdness really early on.
JULIA: Yeah.
BROOKE: They got like—
AMANDA: Hmm.
BROOKE: The kids who fit in, that was taken from them, or without— maybe without even them being aware of it, whereas I got to just be like a little weirdo who then kind of grew up into, like, a little witchy pervert, and then, like just felt— and then because I had that going for me and could cultivate it consistently, whether or not people allowed me to or approved of me doing so, like I always was able to found— find my people and find my friends, and then find the counter cultures of, like, music and art and literature that continue to nourish my weird interest. So I think it's something that just, like, any human being, any soul on Earth can have a weird, witchy side. And I think that there are just like— I think it's human to gravitate towards mystery. I think it's human to gravitate towards a desire to understand life beyond what we can observe with our two eyes or with our senses. And I think that that kind of leads you to witchcraft. It leads you to appreciate nature and the natural world in a different way. It leads you to grapple with life and death in a different way. I mean, we're all gonna die, but the meaning we make out of the lives we live knowing that, I think, is really enhanced and embellished when we're allowed to be weird with it. I look back at my childhood, and I think that one of the greatest gifts of the life that I have is that I was a trans child, and so I instinctively— even if I didn't have the words for it, I instinctively resisted the dominant culture that was everywhere I went, and that was sort of forced upon me. I just knew it wasn't for me, instinctively. And so that gift of being different— and people are different in all kinds of, you know, in all kinds of ways. It's not simply a trans narrative, but for me, it's— it is my transness and it is my queerness. And my interest in dyke cultures and like I, you know, I just knew that what I was seeing around me wasn't for me, and what kind of appealed to me is that very early on in my Catholic context, there was just this omnipresent language of the devil and of sin, and I— that was sort of the first grammar of my difference that I had to describe what was going on for me. But very quickly, you know, Satan and the devil, like, turned into a much wider world of mythology and pagan deities. So I was really lucky that I had the— language to get out and to imagine a different world for myself and imagine a different trajectory for my life. I didn't grow up with a lot of art or culture around me. You know, I grew up in a pretty, very working class environment, so I didn't really have access to, like, museums or anything like that. I just kind of had my own imagination, and I could just be grateful that I was allowed to— that was strong enough to kind of sustain me. Pity the popular kids, you know? Pity the popular kids.
JULIA: Yeah, I personally don't trust anyone who was like a cool, popular person in elementary school or middle school, because I'm like, "Oh, so you, like, cut your childhood short, is basically what I'm hearing."
BROOKE: Yeah, there's a lot to unlearn.
JULIA: I know. And, like, the people who are making fun of the kids playing dinosaurs on the playground. I'm like, "Oh, you lost your joy so early. Like, who hurt you in this way that you had to lose your joy—"
BROOKE: Yeah.
JULIA: "—in such a, like, painfully obvious way in hindsight, you know?"
BROOKE: Yeah.
AMANDA: Yeah. I don't know how people who fit into society's molds get that instinct or impetus to question things. Like, I've talked on the show before about how, for me, queerness and feeling that difference among myself, both in sexuality and, you know, gender non-conformity, when I was 10, 11, 12, forced me to say, "All right. Well, the narratives available to me are not going to fit for me, so like, what the hell do I want out of my life?" And I— you know, without the sort of push of, you know, of difference of disability, of sexuality, of gender non-conformity, of transness, I don't— I genuinely don't know how people start to do it. So, you know, shout out to them that they do, if and when they do. But for me, I have always been so grateful for that, because that led me to ask all kinds of questions about society and family and work and pleasure, and, like, what the hell do I do with this and what do I actually want?
JULIA: Hmm.
BROOKE: Yeah. I think that's a really beautiful way of putting it. I think it's just true that, yeah, we have— we all have things to unlearn throughout our lives. You know, things that we inherit, that are either harmful, or toxic, or not for us, or bigoted, or, you know, white supremacist. I grew— you know, I'm white, so that's definitely something I've had to unpack from my childhood upbringing and unlearn. And, yeah, it's just true that, like, popular kids have a lot more to unlearn because they've never had, like, you know, that— for whatever reason, that it's sort of, like, the curse of a gilded cage, you know? It looks that— I— and so I never really envied those kids. I sort of felt like—
JULIA: Hmm.
AMANDA: Hmm.
BROOKE: —We all got a raw deal as children. There weren't— there, in general, aren't a lot of resources for kids, let alone teenagers. And so, yeah, I was lucky that for whatever reason, something I was born with was just a— like a stubbornness around my own imagination, maybe. And I think that's like a— like having a vivid imagination is what witchcraft is all about. It's— you know, it's a spirituality predicated on cultivating devotion to a divinity of your own understanding. It's very intimate. It's very personal. That's a really— for me, it's been a really beautiful way to move through life, because— something that's also true about my childhood is I never really blamed God for what religion was doing to me. And I don't necessarily blame people who have very religious paths, because I just understand that a desire for a relationship to the divine is just human. And so everyone— a lot of people come by and, honestly, the religion they inherit or choose to— the organized religion that they inherit or choose to pursue, I think there's beauty in that, too. It's just not for me. I think I can at least credit my Roman Catholic upbringing with a love of pageantry and finery—
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
BROOKE: —and luxurious ritual.
JULIA: I have to ask, were you following along with the new conclave that was happening in the election of the new pope and everything?
BROOKE: I haven't been very involved in mainstream Roman Catholicism for a long time, although there are—
JULIA: I mean, seeing.
BROOKE: Yeah, there are some syncretic saints and things that I occasionally work with. But in this case, I watched Conclave, and I kept my eye on that— kept my eye on the chimney, and thought it was just a— you know, it's just an, again, a really ancient ritual.
JULIA: The pageantry.
BROOKE: The pageantry of it.
JULIA: Yeah.
BROOKE: It's just such an old way of doing things. And so I do always have a little bit of a fascination with—
JULIA: Yes.
BROOKE: —strange rituals that have persisted over the— over hundreds of years. That's like my historian side, is I always— I'm interested in pursuing tradition as it has survived over the years in any denomination, really.
AMANDA: Julia and I were both raised Catholic, and something we have unpacked a lot on the show is what we, you know, lovingly termed "LOL. It's not pagan, it's fine," AKA, all of the syncretic instances of Catholicism, you know, embracing, absorbing, appropriating, or sort of twisting existing ritual and belief in order to fit into their own worldview.
BROOKE: Yeah.
AMANDA: And not sort of undermine their power and social influence. So, Brooke, thinking about your own Catholic upbringing, what are some of the, "LOL. It's not pagan, it's fine," moments or themes or symbols or pieces of ritual that you find fascinating or that perhaps you have a relationship to in your contemporary witch practice?
AMANDA: Yeah. Oh, I love— this is such an interesting— I mean, it's so true and it's— I mean, it's true about so many religions. I mean, they're very reactive to the cultures around them, any type of organized religion. And so there's constant movement of absorption, absorption, even despite censorship. Like, all of these things are happening all the time. I mean, it even happens with mythology. You see all the different versions of a myth, it's possible to tell. And I think that that's true. There are a lot of different versions of—
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
BROOKE: —Catholicism that it's possible to describe, depending on location and time. Big hits for me when I was— I mean, I was really into my church as a kid. That was, like— so that was sort of the first fall, is that I love—
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
BROOKE: Like, I— you know, something that comes up in bargain, which is just like, because I don't have really access to, like, cultural institutions, the church is my cultural institution. And so I was very involved in the mass of my church. It was where I saw all the most beautiful things for the first time in my life, beautiful fabrics, beautiful stained glass, incense, candles. They would fill—
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
AMANDA: —the church with flowers at different— you know, in Advent and Lent. And so I, you know, remember— I really remember the smell of lilies during Lent, and that being this, like, early esthetic experience that I had.
JULIA: Hmm.
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
BROOKE: But big hits for me was just being an altar server at the mass itself. That was kind of my first paid gig. I was a very pious child, so I would get to serve at weddings, at funerals, at high masses. And then, you know, either the best man or the undertaker or— you know, I'd get tips. So I was kind of serving for tips—
AMANDA: I mean [16:27]
BROOKE: —when I was about 9, 10 years old. And I would get up every— early every morning to go to that 7:00 AM mass to serve. And then I kind of upgraded to be the reader, because I really loved— you know, a big thing that, I think, excites me about the mythos of Catholicism is all of its attention placed on the book.
JULIA: Hmm.
BROOKE: And historically, people have incredible ways of venerating scripture. You know, there are descriptions you eat— you know, there's a part where the angel comes to St. John and you take and you eat the book, and it tastes like— it tastes bitter, and then, like, honey. You know, people talk about the word becoming flesh. There's such a veneration of book culture—
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
BROOKE: —in Catholicism. And, I mean, it's very hard— one, in lots of instances. You know, a lot of religious war has been fought over people's access to the scriptures in their own language.
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
BROOKE: That's a really long standing heresy that caused a lot of upheaval in the church in the 14th, 15th, 16th, 17th centuries. I think the Catholicism taught me to sort of venerate and have a creepy material relationship to books. It taught me to seek books out for ecstatic experiences. It taught me that, like, you could read a book and have a life-changing experience, because that's what the entirety of scripture is predicated on. And so I think that's something that I kind of had a little heretical— I ran with it pretty heretically.
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
BROOKE: —because I was, like, taking it to my Goosebump books and taking it to Frankenstein, and all the other reading that I was having.
JULIA: Hmm.
BROOKE: So, yeah, I love, like, Christian Bibliophilia. I'm also a big fan of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit was always my favorite.
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
AMANDA: That was always my answer in Catholic school when I didn't know the answer. I go with, "The Holy Spirit." And more often than not, they're like, "I mean, there's a case to be made, sure."
BROOKE: So the confirmation initiation ritual I took so seriously because I really wanted to be initiated into the church. Again, these are all just like what I wanted from this particular institution. It kind of couldn't give me the fullest version of. I would have to seek that elsewhere later in life. But, you know, there is a book that— when I worked at Treadwell's, that came across my desk, and it was called like, Things I Wish My Magus Had Taught Me, and what— and the first lesson was the first Coven you get initiated in isn't going to be the last, you know? You— people move through and I thought, "Oh, that's— that makes sense with my Catholic upbringing. You know, it was the first, but it's not— it wasn't the last spiritual group that I would be initiated in.
JULIA: Hmm.
BROOKE: It just taught me a lot about my tastes. So, yeah, confirmation was a very important ritual. The idea that you get anointed and you're reenacting an experience in which the apostles were give— were visited upon with tongues of fire and made to speak in all these different languages. I thought that— I really wanted that to happen to me.
JULIA: You were like, "Give me the tongues, baby. Give me the tongues."
BROOKE: I was like, "Give me those tongues of flame."
AMANDA: I mean, there's also a little bit of eroticism, right? Or a lot of eroticism. Like wanting—
BROOKE: Yeah,
AMANDA: —to be consumed, transformed, sublimated. I completely get it.
BROOKE: It felt like a more appropriate eroticism for me, who had no interest in, like, the kid— like the kids around me, you know?
JULIA: Hmm.
BROOKE: My ironic [19:45] energy—
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
BROOKE: —didn't have anywhere to go, but love of God. it felt like the most intense thing that you could— I wanted to feel— I've always wanted to feel as intensely as I can, you know? I think that's what life is about. And so that also felt like—
AMANDA: Yes.
BROOKE: —the only environment where that was even a possibility.
JULIA: Well, don't worry, Brooke, I will save crushvelvet.net before the end of this conversation, but just let you know that's coming at some point.
BROOKE: Oh, gosh. Yeah. My big reveal.
JULIA: Incredible.
BROOKE: Okay, all right. I mean, I wrote it, so I have to talk about it, I guess.
JULIA: Listen, we'll get to it. You gave me a jump scare listening to that chapter being read. I— we'll talk about it, we'll talk about it. But first, before we get to that, how about we go grab a refill?
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JULIA: Hey, it's Julia, and welcome to the refill. Let's thank, of course, our patrons. Thank you so much to our supporting producer-level patrons like Uhleeseeuh, Anne, Hannah, Lily, Matthew, Rikoelike, Scott, Wil and AE (Ah). And, of course, our legend-level patrons, Audra, Bex, Chibi Yokai, Michael, Morgan H., Captain Jonathan MAL-uh-kye Cosmos, Sarah, and Bea Me Up Scotty. And, hey, you, too, could join our Patreon by going to patreon.com/spiritspodcast, where you can get cool rewards, like ad-free episodes, recipe cards for every single gosh darn episode, bonus urban legends episodes, and even quarterly tarot readings that happen to coincide with the solstices and the equinoxes. I just released the June summer solstice Tarot reading, and I had a lot of fun doing it. Spoiler alert, things are looking good for the summer, so check that out. That is patreon.com/spiritspodcast. I also want to tell you a little bit about another show here at Multitude, Tiny Matters. Listen, science shapes every part of our lives, but so much of its influence is overlooked or buried in the past. Tiny Matters is an award-winning podcast about tiny things, from molecules to microbes that have a big and often surprising impact on society, from deadly diseases to forensic toxicology, to the search for extraterrestrial life. Hosts and former scientists Sam Jones and Deboki Chakravarti embraced the awe and messiness of science and its place in history and today, and how it could impact our world's future. Tiny Matters is brought to you by the American Chemical Society, a non-profit scientific organization based in Washington, DC, and is a part of Multitude. So new episodes every Wednesday, wherever you get your podcasts. Check it out. We're also sponsored this week by a company that we love here at Multitude, and that is bookshop.org. Unfortunately, in the world that we live in today, independent booksellers are a dying breed. If you're looking for a way to buy your books with convenience where they get shipped right to your door, but you don't want to support like the big, mega corporations that are trying to undercut your independent booksellers, try bookshop.org, and use our special promo code, Spirits. You'll be able to support a bookstore that is independent, that needs a little bit of help, and, you know, I think that that is a great way to go about life, right? You should be supporting the people who bring joy and knowledge to you on a day-to-day, if not, weekly basis. And buying books, especially buying books from independent booksellers, is the way to go. Again, that is bookshop.org and use the promo code Spirits to get 10% off. So bookshop.org, promo code Spirits. And now, let's get back to the show.
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JULIA: We are back. And Brooke, I think this is a great opportunity to transition into, what were your experiences at Treadwell's? Were you already starting to practice witchcraft when you worked at the occult bookstore, or did working there sort of lead you down that path more structurally, I suppose.
BROOKE: I was already doing it before I worked at the books— before I worked at the bookstore, I was already engaged in, you know, following the lunar cycle, spell work, rituals, Tarot, divination.
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
BROOKE: It was all a part of my life, as was the bookshop itself. You know, it was a really important place for me in terms of community. Like, I spent a lot of time at Treadwell's before I worked there. Going to lectures. I was— you know, I had friends who I would meet at the bookshop in order to attend lectures together.
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
BROOKE: And so it was a really important part of my life in London, and my intellectual life, my sense of community.
JULIA: When people have certain expectations going into a occult bookshop they are almost looking for, I guess, a performance in some way. What was that like for you as the person sort of working retail?
BROOKE: Yeah, absolutely. My way of thinking of it is that everyone who walks through the door wanted to have a transformative spiritual experience. And for a lot of reasons, meeting someone where they are with that expectation is a lot of work. And I mean, I think there's a magic to all forms of retail. It's like any retail, the people who undertake that work need to be paid more than they are, because people just bring— like I said, you meet people where they are, which means they have— they may be in distress. They may be going through a breakup. They may be, actually, on top of the world and wanting to celebrate. You just, like, having to suss out what is going on, what someone's mentality that they're bringing to you is just a part of the kind of light psychology of greeting people as they walk into your shop. And, yeah, as I said, when it is based around questions of spirituality, questions of divinity, questions of, like, what does it mean to have ecstatic communion with the universe? And then also, what does it mean to do all of that outside organized religion in a kind of DIY spiritual practice that is often, and has been for centuries, maligned. You know, which is, I know in pop culture have— I mean, there's, there's such an amazing body of charismatic, sexy, pop cultural witches.
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
BROOKE: And the reality of the longer trajectory that we're working against historically is one of incredible persecution and delusion even. And so people brought all of that to me on a daily basis when I was working at Treadwell's. There were people who came in who thought we were doing the work of the devil and we're really distressed by that. There were people who came in and tried to shoplift, to destroy books that they thought were harmful. There were people who came in because they were heart sick and, like, wanted me to do a spell to bring back the person who they had broken up with. And it was amazing that I could kind of oscillate between, like, the two realities of selling books, which is, like, books are magic and they're transformative, and to me, they're lifesavers, so I can, like, absolutely work with books to give people a heightened experience of what's possible in life. I could absolutely prescribe books to provide comfort, to provide companionship. And I could also sort of back up and say, "Whoa, we're just a bookshop."
AMANDA: Uh-hmm. Uh-hmm.
BROOKE: "We can't— it's not a service we can provide." Books are very elastic in that way, and so it was the perfect cover, I guess. I don't know how you do it with clothes in the same way, but I'm sure a clothing witch would know. Part of the fun of writing Bargain Witch was, like, I could sort of look back at my experiences, both as a private individual, solitary practitioner of witchcraft, and I could look at what I saw kind of unfold before me while I was working at the bookshop as the sort of, like, wider witch economy. Like, who are all the people who actually make a really gentle and honest living as witches?
AMANDA: Hmm.
BROOKE: Whether they're providing healing or divination, or, in my case, selling books or making— you know, drying out herbs and selling them as an apothecary. You know, there are so many people in the world who actually, I think, make kind of an honest buck that way. You really can't promise spiritual fulfillment, or you can't promise instant results. But I do believe that when you ask of someone to spend time, like, alone by candlelight, focusing on what they think God can be, like there is a transformation and a change there. You know, me and the rest of the witch economy kind of, like, get by in this way. And then the other kind of perspective that I got to see while I was working at the shop was just, like, how many different people long for a spiritual— like, long to nourish their spirituality, and that— I mean, it really made me believe like that is just an inherent part of being human, is there's just this old— this reaching beyond. And it's beautiful, and it's one of the oldest things that, I think, like we have— that we know about humanity, like a lot of the oldest writing that survives on cave walls and, you know— or on bones of oxes, like they depict— like we think the, you know, phases of the moon. We— like, we have just, like, long documented instances of people looking at the sky and trying to make sense of it. People trying to make sense of death and its inevitability. People were bringing that, like, very heightened stakes to me all the time, and I loved it. I mean, I don't know that I could work in any other environment, but at the same time, at the end of the day, it was— I was real tired, you know?
JULIA: As all retail workers are very familiar with.
BROOKE: Yeah.
JULIA: Now, I vaguely remember from listening to some of your talks about Bargain Witch, you mentioned something about spooky experiences in the bookshop. Was there a particular one that stood out to you in terms of— obviously, I want people to go buy the book. However, is there one that you can kind of tease us with as something, maybe a little supernatural that might have happened to you while you were working there?
BROOKE: Maybe the spookiest thing is that throughout my time there, I always felt an incredible sense of benevolence and protection. I guess I've had unexplained encounters that were a little bit creepier and more ghostly outside of Treadwell's, but it—
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
BROOKE: —was very, you know, seriously protected place. Something that we talked about even from my kind of ad hoc interview for the job, was the importance of astral hygiene, as we called it.
JULIA: Hmm.
BROOKE: And when you're working in ritual in the basement, you know, you have to open and close the circle properly. You have to banish any malefic spirits who would seek dominion over you, you know, properly. And you, yourself, have to take good care of yourself so that you're— you know, so that you're not susceptible to an overly sensitive— you know, you have to be sensitive so that you can, like, respond and— as I said, I think I said this before, like, you know, a big part of the job is maintaining sanctuary. You know, we would have people coming in who would tell— who would get fixated on myself or another employee, and say, you know, "I have dreams about you all the time."
JULIA: Oh.
BROOKE: "I had dreams where you were burning at— being burned as a witch."
JULIA: Uh-oh.
AMANDA: Oh.
BROOKE: "When you recommended this book, I knew it was a sign to me." You know, you would have people coming into the shop, as I said, like in distress and really fixating. The spookiest thing is that I never felt frightened of those people. I always felt very taken care of, and very protected, and very capable of de-escalating that conversation and getting them out. We could also continue our day's work. I'm glad I didn't have— I don't know how long I could have worked there if I felt there was some kind of malevolent presence. And of course, you know, this is London, so there's probably too many ghosts and too many hauntings in a city that has been a metropolis, that has been at the center of a really, like, violent rollout of empire for just centuries and centuries and centuries. Like, if all of that was ghostly, like, it would be overwhelming. And so— and there are so many houses that have these kind of spirits in them, and that kind of whole bad memories. But Treadwell's has never had that for me. It was always this place that allowed me to be, like, remarkably serene, even when— you know, I kind of would be in danger. I've had these other kind of ghostly experiences in my life, but I really talk a lot about ghosts in the book, so much as like the night— as like, what Karl Marx calls, like, the "nightmare of history" that weighs—
JULIA: Yeah.
BROOKE: —on our brains, you know?
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
BROOKE: I've always been such a materials-based person, and so my experience with, I guess, the afterlife and the kinds of spiritual and psychical remains of people's lives, it all comes to me through archival research and old books. And then sometimes— because this is another— this is like a benefit of living in London, and sometimes it comes from site specific places, just because some of the buildings are so old. Yeah, by and large, I feel like the spookiest thing is that I was really protected. Another example was like there was someone who would just relentlessly digitally manipulate pictures of the bookshop to make it look like it was on fire, posting them on social media and tagging us in them. And kind of threatening that this is going to happen. So, you know, like I said with witchcraft, there's so much baggage, and the historic precedent is burning time. So it was, like, you know, people who had some real spiritual hang-ups and just some honest distress that, you know, just kind of speaks to the failure of mental health system and healthcare as we know it. But, yeah, we would be on the receiving end of that. Somehow the story has been around for over 15 years and nothing bad has ever happened. We've maintained the sanctuary.
JULIA: What's incredible to me, too, Brooke, is hearing you talk about that, and that's like a very genuinely frightening experience to kind of have to go through in your workplace, and also a place that you consider like an extremely safe place. And hearing you approach these people's basically threats to you with such empathy and understanding and realizing that they are coming from a place of distress and lack of understanding of themselves and projection onto you and the bookstore is really, really beautiful. Ad I just want to commend you on that, because that is genuinely something that I think anyone listening to this could learn a lot from. So—
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
JULIA: —thank you for that perspective, particularly.
BROOKE: Yeah, it's sometimes hard to remember in the moment, but really important for me, at least, to remember in a scenario that feels unsafe, like this isn't about me, but it's being directed at me. How can I direct it somewhere else?
JULIA: Uh-hmm. Yeah.
BROOKE: How can I de-escalate and get it out? You know? I hate to think of people suffering spiritually or any other way, and I don't want to add to it. I also don't want to receive it. And that was the—
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
BROOKE: —negotiation while I was also recommending books.
JULIA: Now, Brooke, I have to ask, because in getting myself prepared for this interview and looking into your work and hearing you speak, there was a particular talk that you did where you were speaking a little bit about sort of your, I would say, like queer witchy origins and your queer witchy beginnings. So I do have to ask you to talk on crushvelvet.net. [35:52] I warned you that it was coming, so—
BROOKE: You know, it's funny, like I feel, like, generally, have been warned that that is the chapter that I will be reading from and talking from the most. It was— it started as a paragraph when I was writing and my partner, my wife now, read it and said, "What is this? You need to explain more about what is going on with this website about Alan Rickman, but you're also kind of pretending to be your projection of who this old British actor, Alan Rickman, is. Like, you got to talk about this." And it was really— both, it came so easily, and now I'm like, "Oh, my God, what did I do? I've shared this, like, very creepy secret about myself." So I knew this would come and I'm— this is like— I thank you for asking me, because it's nice to practice in a safe space.
JULIA: If you want, Brooke, I will share how safe of a space it is with you. In hearing you talk about it, we'll also— we're going to transition into talking about Neopets—
AMANDA: Yes.
JULIA: —and the role play forums.
BROOKE: Yeah.
AMANDA: Yes.
JULIA: You started speaking about that, and then you kind of, I guess, described what your role play experience on Neopets was like, and you said the name Romulus. And I thought I was about to get doxed, because I, too, played a character named Romulus who may or may not have been a werewolf from a series we don't talk about anymore.
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
BROOKE: Yeah.
JULIA: I— like my heart stopped. So you are in a safe place, because, hey, we were all there.
BROOKE: Okay, I appreciate that exchange of vulnerability. I guess to write this book, I had to do something very uncomfortable for me, which is not hide behind the rigor of my research, and talk a little bit about, like, why is esoteric spirituality philosophy such a lifelong interest for me? You know, there are these, like, flickers of interest throughout my childhood, but the real— yeah, the real part of it had— when I look back, had to be the early, like wildness of the internet and social media kind of— in a time that is so now— like that just looks so different and behaves so differently from social media, but the seeds of social media are definitely there.
AMANDA: Like, imagine all of the all of the energy and craziness and pent up, just like desired a shit post on social media. But instead of being able to just, like, get that out, it was saved up. It was percolating. It was like becoming— you know, it was becoming something else, and we had to express ourselves in long form, epistolary, probably sexually inappropriate roleplay that is, like, we don't— they don't make them like that anymore.
BROOKE: Yeah.
JULIA: Or if they do, we don't know where they're doing it on the internet. That's true. That's true. Yeah.
BROOKE: Yeah. There's this interesting contradiction, which is, like— my parents were very strict with me, and even looking back, I see a lot of that strictness as relating to my gender non-conformity in lots of interesting ways. Where they kind of couldn't have any type of say or control, was like the reading I was doing, and then the kind of explosion of, like, America Online.
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
BROOKE: Yeah, it's interesting what you say about, like, the kind of difference between the internet then now. It's just like things took— things still were really clunky and took time. So just like even getting connected to the internet, like, took a minute— like, took a couple minutes, you know, and, like, kept the phone line occupied so you couldn't make phone calls at the same time as you were on the internet. And then a lot of the work that you and we had to do— you know, it was really long form writing. It was really verbose.
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
BROOKE: It wasn't like an Internet of images in the way that social media has really moved toward images, and especially moving images. It was like you had to kind of say it all with words, and everyone was worried and warning that, like, when you were speaking to someone online, it was going to be an old man who was trying to lure you and take advantage of you. And I was, like, ostensibly, like a 13-year-old girl at an all-girl Catholic school pretending to be a 58-year-old man.
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
BROOKE: And the number of people I've spoken to who like portray themselves in all different kinds of ways. So, you know, it's actually like my experience is not common. Hence, even just the fantasy serie— the magical fantasy series that we no longer name, was really definitive to my life at this point. And the weight between a new book coming out, like that's what we were all doing. We were all just waiting for this new book to come out. And in that weight, there was just like a burst of really, really filthy creativity. It was like all fanfiction. It was all smut. And if you were in writing smut fanfiction, you were in like a kind of RPG doing— like writing— and writing it out live with people, or you were doing both, or a mixture of the two. But,, yeah, this kind of narrative form of describing my desires and my ideal self was what led me to get much deeper into magic. Because again and again, what I kept— like, even though I was describing sex scenes, I wanted it to be like dark and goth and, you know, like, kind of aligned to the, like, Nine Inch Nails songs of like industrial goth that I was really listening to at the time, that I've been downloading illegally on Napster and LimeWire. There were a couple of really robust things about the early internet. One of them was, like, the world of witches. Actually, there's— my favorite episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer is called "I Robot Eugene," and it's about like a demon that gets online, that, like, reincarnates into a computer. But one of the thing— one of the, like, moments in it, there's like a character misconduct who's like,
Oh, we're called techno pagans." And that was really true of that time period. So I actually had really high-class resources for learning about alchemy, hermeticism, and— yeah. And those— a lot of those websites still exist and then, like, the world of paganism. And it was just a way to learn about those things without having— because I couldn't go anywhere, I couldn't afford to go anywhere. I didn't have my license. There was just— there was really nothing outside of the internet for me. And I remember thinking like, "I just get to be a little freak here and bide my time until I have some agency to go out in the world."
JULIA: I—
BROOKE: I have been very, like, demure about this.
JULIA: And I love that, because I do want people to go and buy the book and read the chapter because it is enthralling in the best possible way. But I do really like this as a through line for "Hey, not only did this help me, like, kind of deal with some gender stuff and some sexuality stuff that I might not have been able to otherwise." And I think that's true of a lot of people who kind of grew up on the early internet, for better or for worse. But the fact that it also led you down your witchy path, is kind of this beautiful metaphor for, I don't know, growing up in the early internet and finding out ways that we could be different, in ways that we couldn't explore in our hometowns, within our, like, small, insulated communities, right?
AMANDA: And in the bodies we were born into, which, for a lot of us, you know, holds us back from imagination of self and also how others perceive us. Like, saying to somebody my gender ambiguous, you know, pen name assumes that I am somebody worth talking to, who's— who you're able to meet on terms of who I am, what my interests are, what my ideas are, and not the body I'm presenting.
BROOKE: And in my case— and this is true for my life, still, any kind of digital culture has always been just, like, incredibly complimentary to what's happening in my waking, walking life. You know, in my— I mean, the digital is physical, but it just in a different way. It's kind of its own— it's really its own realm. But for me, it's always worked best when it's, like, let me— like, learn how to pursue things in my day-to-day life more rapidly. So yeah, I guess the way that this chapter about just, like, the years in my life where I was kind of trying to use my dissociative abilities as a superpower to also role play and imagine myself in other realities or other bodies. Everything I was describing about myself, then I kind of went on to pursue in my life. Like, I dedicated my life to books and libraries. And, you know, even though we were describing sex, a lot of the backdrop of it, you know, the really crucial backdrop was like— it was always happening in libraries, you know?
AMANDA: It's like, yeah, but where? Surrounded by knowledge, a little bit private, a little bit public. Ooh, a little sexy. Some shelves there,
BROOKE: And all the research I was doing, like, I would really painstakingly describe, like, what these books look like, how they were bound, what were their titles, where were they published. And I was, like, kind of using that— channeling that into, like, the erotics of a situation that I had not experienced as, like, a dorky virgin, a totally age-appropriate virgin. Like, yeah, I then could, like, sort of run with that imagination later on, and it really— I did go to— I did end up going to libraries that fit that description, and I did end up reading those books, and then I did end up, like, working in a bookstore where those books were sold, and I could speak to how they changed my life. Both through reading them and in the abstract of even just having describing them and having them around me. So, like, my internet reality became increasingly real and increasingly vivid and material. That's a little bit about why that chapter is there, as well, being trans on the internet in the year 2001. And honestly, I had forgotten a lot about that part of my life, or just like wouldn't really think about it, except through writing this book. But also, the thing that really brought it all up for me was through the bureaucracy of getting healthcare initially.
JULIA: Hmm.
BROOKE: Because I answer all these questions, you know, about my relationship to the gender I was pres— I was trying to live as in the world. I'd answer a lot of questions about, like, my gender perceived as birth, and how I'm going against that to kind of get my gender dysphoria diagnosis. And—
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
BROOKE: —I was like, "Oh, actually, I know how to write about this." Actually, this is like, my earliest, most prolific body of writing, and then—
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
BROOKE: —we're handing in, and, like— in my application, I even, like, wrote out about like, alchemy, and I remember like this— like the therapist who looked at it was like, Wow, this was really eloquent.
AMANDA: You're like, "Thanks. It's my job."
BROOKE: And I was like, "Oh, thank you." And then I like, you know, made a [46:44] anyone who needs to copy my answers, to fill out their form, like "There you go."
JULIA: There it is. There it is. Such a wonderful chance to get to chat with you today. I am so excited to sit down and get a chance to read Bargain Witch: Essays in Self-Initiation. For the people at home, where can they pick up the book and where can they find more of your work?
BROOKE: If you look through bookshop.org, that's the best place to order that book. And the press that is putting it out is called Dopamine Books. And if you go to dopaminebooks.org, you can click through and buy it through our imprint on bookshop.org. We have, like, an affiliate link, and then that— it's a nonprofit like queer and trans run press that has never had any funding. So if you buy it through the Dopamine Books, bookshop.org website, then we get a little bit extra. And if you want to find more about me, I have a website, you know, and it has the kind of standard info, contact, et cetera, and it's just my name, bspalmieri, P-A-L-M-I-E-R-I. .com. Sadly, crushvelvet.net is no longer.
JULIA: Boo.
BROOKE: But it's still on the Internet Archive.
JULIA: Okay, good, good.
AMANDA: Pour one out.
BROOKE: And that's how I— I mean, I meant to say that's how I did some of the research for that piece.
AMANDA: I think the Venn diagram of, like, librarians and archivists, queer folks who found some part of themselves online in this fandom, and the people behind archive.org and A03 is a beautiful flower, like we have a lot in common.
BROOKE: Together, we can do anything. We can achieve anything.
AMANDA: We truly can.
JULIA: True.
AMANDA: We truly can. Brooke, thank you so much for coming on the show, and we're so excited. Listeners, of course, links are going to be in the description to pick up the book and read your fabulous Subtack, in addition to many, many other things.
BROOKE: Aw, thank you so much. It's been such a pleasure.
JULIA: Our pleasure as well. And remember, listeners, the next time you head to your local occult book shop, stay creepy.
AMANDA: Stay cool.
JULIA: Later, satyrs.
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