The Night House: Witchy Tales, Wild Wisdom, & Other Magical Mischief with Danielle Dulsky
You're listening to Lucid Cafe. I'm your host, Wendy Halley. Hello, and welcome to season eight of Lucid Cafe, a podcast exploring healing, consciousness, and the complexities of being human. And what a season it's gonna be. Just to give you a taste of what's to come, we'll be exploring dreamscapes and liminal spaces and of course shamanism, astrological perspectives, the amazing ways in which women are finding their power.
Wendy:We'll take a deep dive in to clairvoyant readings. And in today's episode, we'll be delving into the mystical healing power contained in fairy tales. I also forgot to mention at the end of last season that I've crossed the 100 episode threshold. Holy shit. Today's episode is number 101.
Wendy:How about that? I also wanted to let you know that I'm offering a free webinar on Saturday, 11/08/2025 called entering the age of possibility, reframing this challenging time, where I'll draw upon indigenous prophecies, a variety of shamanic visionary experiences I've had, Polynesian wisdom tradition, and the insights explored in my new visionary fiction novel Raven's Daughter in order to offer a powerful reframing of our current reality. One that reveals the hidden potential within the disruption. If you'd like to learn more or sign up I'll leave a link in the show notes. Alright so on with the episode.
Wendy:My guest Danielle Dulsky is a fellow heathen visionary, painter and word witch. I love that she calls herself a heathen. She's the author of Seasons of Moon and Flame, Women Most Wild, and The Holy Wild. She teaches internationally and has facilitated circles, embodiment trainings, communal spell work, and seasonal rituals since 2007. She is the founder of the Hag School and believes in the emerging power of wild collectives and sudden circles of curious dreamers, cunning witches, and rebellious artists in healing our ailing world.
Wendy:In this conversation, we discussed Danielle's new book, The Nighthouse, Folklore, Fairy Tales, Rites, and Magic for the Wise and Wild, and how the hidden intelligence embedded in these ancient tales of mysterious origins can offer a potent and transformative window into ourselves. So please enjoy my conversation with Danielle Zilski. Danielle, thanks so much for joining me.
Danielle:Thanks so much for having me. So happy to be here.
Wendy:So you have a new book out, the nighthouse, folklore, fairy tales, rights, and magic for the wise and wild. Yeah. It's a very inviting cover just right off the bat. It was for me anyway. They did a good job of creating the mood because your writing style is super enchanting.
Danielle:Thank you.
Wendy:And given the topic, or I should say, given the the territory you're covering, it makes sense that you would write in this very enchanted way. So, before we get into your book, I'd like to learn a little bit more about you because I
Danielle:Mhmm.
Wendy:I don't know much about you. So the Hag School, tell me about the Hag School.
Danielle:Yeah. Yeah. So the HAG school was born in 2019, and I was actually just reflecting on that period in my life. It was like 2019 where I really did have this kind of compulsion to start moving some of my work virtual. And I didn't really understand why, because I didn't really like teaching virtually at the time.
Danielle:Just, you know, it was all about the real life circles, and people would come to my house. And I was teaching witchcraft out of my house, yoga out of my house for, I don't know, five years before that. So
Wendy:So you did you did you feel the coming pandemic on this very ethereal level, you think, maybe?
Danielle:I think I did. I it I didn't feel that there was anything very ominous coming at that point. It was just kind of like, you know all of these different forces were lining up there, I was not techie, I mean I know many of us weren't, but I was not as techie as I am now at that time. And I had suddenly had this assistant who, you know, was very well versed in all things technology, building websites, and online courses, and all of that stuff.
Wendy:Helpful. Yeah.
Danielle:She yeah. So she so she just started doing it. Without her, I don't know what I would have done. Would have just hidden my cave, when COVID happened. But yeah.
Danielle:So the Hag School was born out of not only that, but also, having connected with all of these different very skilled teachers in witchcraft, storytelling, conscious dance, all of these other areas that were not my strong suit and feeling like, oh, well, I'm pretty good at creating communities, so let's see what happens if I create this Hague School that's like this virtual place where people can come to learn and there's nothing necessarily binding and hidden about it. And every teacher could just kind of do their own thing. So that was how it originated. And then, you know, COVID happened in March 2020. I had a one of my books was coming out in March 2020.
Danielle:So it just had this big climactic
Wendy:Great timing. Yeah.
Danielle:All of my work falling apart and being reborn within the space of a couple of months. And it just really seemed like the hag school was one of those ways where the witch stays a step ahead, you know, even if she's not totally conscious of how and why she's doing that. So, yeah. So it's because, you know, it's grown a lot since then, but that's how it started. And it's still a place where a lot of different witches can come to learn from other witches.
Danielle:And we do have real life things now, which is nice, but there's still the virtual option so we can reach around the world. So yeah.
Wendy:Cool. That's very cool. So would you I mean, you consider yourself a witch? I do. Okay.
Wendy:Mhmm. How did that was this something you were born into, or did it did it enter your life later?
Danielle:It entered my life later. I was definitely not born into it. I was I usually describe my childhood as this, well when I'm talking about the weird product that is me. My mother was a pretty strict born again Christian, especially when I was younger. So I went to a born again Christian school, I went to church twice a week.
Danielle:And then my dad was an atheist biker, Vietnam vet.
Wendy:What a couple.
Danielle:Outlaw, criminal in some ways. So, yes, very different people that and they were married
Wendy:Your mom probably had to do a lot of praying for him!
Danielle:And me. They were married and divorced three times, but, like, stayed together the whole time. So it was very volatile
Wendy:Wow.
Danielle:Very dysfunctional childhood. But I was so I lived with them half the time, and then I was with my very cookies in the oven grandparents the other half of the time when my parents couldn't handle me and my sister. So it was a bizarre and peculiar upbringing, But I I feel like I wouldn't be as willing to sort of test the boundaries and see how much I can get away with in life if I wasn't raised in that weird dynamic. So witchcraft didn't really enter into the equation until after I graduated high school. I moved to Ireland.
Danielle:I think, again, you know, the witch staying a step ahead even when she's not trying to find some sort of ancestral belonging when I was raised in such a weird way. And I did find that there. I lived there for a little while and then came back and, you know, met the guy, went to art school, moved to Florida from Pennsylvania. And the moment I name as, like, my big witchcraft moment wasn't when I'm, you know, hiding star hawks, the spiral dance under my bed when I'm a teenager, although I did that. It wasn't when I was trying to figure out how to cast spells for the first time just in my kitchen with the baby screaming in the background, although I did that.
Danielle:It was a little bit later when I was around 25, so this was really exactly twenty years ago probably from right now, where it's a middle of the night moment, and I'm nursing one of my sons. And it's just one of those, like, lonely, why me moments? And thinking about how spellcraft really makes me feel more autonomous and powerful and sovereign than really anything else I had done up until that point, spiritually anyway. And I was just looking at my baby and thinking about how I didn't want him to have to hide anything about who he was and feeling a little bit hypocritical about how I was really hiding that. And part of the reason I was hiding it is because wasn't just because I didn't wanna be burned at the stake.
Danielle:It was because I didn't really wanna have to explain myself.
Wendy:I get that more than you know. Yeah.
Danielle:I just didn't wanna have to talk about it. I I mean, I still feel that way a lot of the time.
Wendy:So I'm asking annoying questions about it. Yeah.
Danielle:Yeah. Like, you know, if I go to parties and people ask me what I do, I don't say author because the next question is always, well, what do you write about? And then I have to talk about witchcraft. I don't really like to do that with people that aren't there. So anyway, so anyway, I'm nursing my baby, and I'm like, well, I don't want him to have to hide who he is, I'm so not gonna hide it anymore.
Danielle:And I just decided, like, I'm not gonna shout it from the rooftops or anything, but I'm not going to go to extra effort to make other people comfortable. And if I don't feel like explaining myself, I just won't. And and so that was the moment that I name is like, you know, maybe I had sensed and identified as a witch before that, but that moment of feeling like it might be witnessed by other people was sort of like this great epiphany that I really think set me off on the path that I've been walking since then.
Wendy:You've and you literally stepped into that.
Danielle:Yes.
Wendy:That part of you.
Danielle:Mhmm. Yeah. So, you know, after that, it was like, if anybody would ask me if I was a witch, I would say yes. Because
Wendy:it comes up a lot, like, when you're at the grocery store. Hey. Are you a witch?
Danielle:Well, no. I guess not when I'm at the grocery store. I am heavily tattooed, though, so I do get questions about, like, you know, what do the symbols on your fingers mean?
Wendy:Oh, okay. I gotcha. So curious folks will find out.
Danielle:Yeah.
Wendy:Yeah.
Danielle:I mean, even yesterday, I was at this antique store, and this the woman who was there started just asking me about, like, how to clear haunted items. And I was like, how does she know that I might know how to do that?
Wendy:It's almost as if you have a neon sign over your head.
Danielle:I guess.
Wendy:Ask me weird shit!
Danielle:Yeah. That's cool.
Wendy:This is very cool. So I I imagine your life is very colorful as a result. Yeah?
Danielle:It is. It is colorful. It was, you know, after that strange chapter in my life when my kids were very young, I there was this great wounding, which seems to be kind of like a bizarre rite of passage that a lot of witches experience that came with my Saturn return during my late 20s where my original witchcraft teacher who was very like my mother and my best friend at the same time. She just kind of like was the great wounder of my life that made my entire family fall apart. And so I moved back home then to Pennsylvania and was like, well, I'm never gonna teach witchcraft.
Danielle:I'm like, I still won't hide it, but I'm not gonna teach witchcraft. And that lasted about five minutes. And then, you know, I found this community that was very loving, welcoming, incredibly liberal in all of the ways that we want things to be liberal anyway. And I was, I had a a covenant there, like within, I don't know, two years after moving back home. So that was now thirteen or so years ago.
Danielle:And yeah, the rest is kind of history. There's something about, like, having it like, I've always looked at witchcraft as being at least in part an art. I love the beauty of crafting spells. I love building the altar and all of those things that might that that kind of aligned with my artist and creative nature. And so there's something about having it witnessed that, like, makes it shine a little bit brighter.
Danielle:So, you know, the the writing of the books and the, you know, having people come together and cast spells and move through rituals, that's been the the heart of what I would think my my purpose or my calling is at least for the last ten or fifteen years. It's not No.
Wendy:I imagine it's not easy, but you're doing it. That's gotta feel that's gotta feel really fulfilling.
Danielle:Yeah.
Wendy:And and you're probably I mean, I imagine you're serving a lot of people and helping them connect with their own inner witches.
Danielle:Yeah. Yeah. I hope so. It is. It's I've I'm always grateful for, you know, when I talk to other people that are thinking about leading real life, I'm gonna say magical experiences, and I know all of the common, like, fears and trepidation around that.
Danielle:And a lot of those things that other people worry about and maybe have even encountered, I haven't really encountered in my work. Like, it's not like there aren't conflicts when there's a bunch of women who come together.
Wendy:There is that.
Danielle:There are those, but, you know, enough to stop me from doing it. I've definitely not encountered that. So, yeah, I do feel really grateful that these spontaneous communities that I'm able to create, they they always seem to work and be right and feed people in the way that they need to be said.
Wendy:Well, I think I mean, that would be a reflection on you because if you're if you're facilitating those processes, then you're setting the tone, you're set you're kind of creating a culture
Danielle:Yeah.
Wendy:Of openness around that. So it's it's yeah. That it it that's how that works, I think.
Danielle:Yeah. Yeah. I hope so. A lot of it feels lucky if I'm being honest.
Wendy:Well, but but we could go back to that kind of that part of you that seems to have a knowing that you're not always consciously aware of.
Danielle:It's true. Right. It's true.
Wendy:It makes perfect sense.
Danielle:Yeah.
Wendy:But for any of us who are, like, trying to to be better or whatever Mhmm. It it's it's a hard thing to kinda surrender to that wise part of ourselves. I mean Yeah. And trust that it's it's always gonna be there and that we're always gonna recognize it, but it works in such mysterious ways and also very quiet ways. Right?
Wendy:So we don't even know
Danielle:Yeah. A lot of the times
Wendy:What the fuck's going on?
Danielle:Right. Right. Exactly. Yeah. Like our our wise and future self is always trying to call us toward them.
Danielle:And that we, you know, if if that's us, that it's happening just in our brain or in the ethers or whatever, we don't need to necessarily know all the ins and outs of it, I guess. I'm a somewhat controlling person, so I do Well,
Wendy:I mean, who isn't really? I mean, really? Some of us more than others for sure. But, yeah, one of the things I've I've discovered through my own practice and my own direct experiences is that it seems that you can only see this in hindsight, but it seems that everything is beautifully orchestrated. Like, when you look back, right, on the trajectory of your life
Danielle:Mhmm.
Wendy:You can see that, like, oh, wow. Like, even that deep wounding from this mentor
Danielle:Yeah.
Wendy:It if it wasn't for her, probably you wouldn't Yeah. Have ended up where you are now. Right? I mean
Danielle:Right. Exactly.
Wendy:How freaking cool is that?
Danielle:Yeah.
Wendy:But in the moment, it's painful as hell, and you don't you can't see that.
Danielle:Right.
Wendy:It's so hard to imagine that. I mean, all this terrible shit that's happening is actually there's there might be something to it.
Danielle:There's some intelligence afoot. Yeah. That's how I feel.
Wendy:That's cool. Well, went off on a bit of a tangent there, so I wanna get to your I wanna get to your new book. The title itself is intriguing. Right? The Nighthouse.
Danielle:Yeah.
Wendy:So what do you mean by the knighthouse? What is that symbolic of?
Danielle:Yeah. So and even just going back to the cover, there's certain images and fairy tales that repeat even sometimes all over the world. So, you know, there's there's just such this this strange quality to orally transmitted fairy tales. So, not necessarily literary fairy tales that were written and we know who the author is but the orally transmitted fairy tales that were primarily collected by men, but we know they were transmitted primarily by women and that we still don't really know where they came from. Like we don't really know their origins and there are these common images that repeat whether the fairy tale was you know, there's a fairy tale of the handless maiden for example has the most popular version is the German version but there's a version that's written in Swahili that's almost the exact same plot line from a very different part of the world, but the imagery is the same.
Danielle:So I just fell in love with that because I love, you know, the oracles that seem to be there, and we don't really, like, like, reading the birds or, you know, reading the trees and the oracles that seem to be universal and where did they come from. So the knighthouse is a common image in fairy tales. It's sort of like, you know, Rapunzel's tower or the house of the wild ones from the handless maiden or Baba Yaga's hut. It's the woodland house or sometimes the jungle house or the initiatory cave that is always found when the main character is in the middle of an initiation. So it's, you know, you never find this hidden house of healing when everything's great.
Danielle:You know, you find this hidden house of healing either when you're just in your depths, in the void, like, you know, in our modern lives when we're crying on the bathroom floor, like when you're in that middle phase of an initiation that follows the death but the rebirth hasn't come yet, that's when that hidden house is found. So it's found in the dark. So the night house, and then on the cover, there's the red door. That red door image is another one that repeats in a lot of fairy tales. You know, there's like nothing really good is ever behind the red door.
Danielle:You're gonna open the red door. You might find, you know, the the bloody well or, you know, somebody's dead behind it or something like that. But that's always you know yes we have this hidden house of healing where we know we will become reborn kind of like in a cocoon but we've got to find that red door that's usually in the cellar and like that's where the really gnarly shit is and you don't get to get out of that nighthouse until you've opened that red door. So yeah, so that's where the title came from. I am a weird author in that I always come up with the title of my books first that's like consistently true And then I'm like, let's let the book grow into this weird title that I've come up with.
Wendy:Very cool. I actually did that with with the my most recent book. Yeah. The the title was there, and then yeah. Then the story.
Wendy:Yeah. So it's an unusual book, not in a bad way, but just in in your approach and what you're inviting readers to do. So it would be helpful if you can kind of give a general overview on what your hope is, how to use this book, because you you talk about two different ways to really use this book. And if you could just sort of give a summary of what that would look like.
Danielle:Yeah. So the structure of the book is essentially three parts, and each of the three parts has, say, three or four chapters in each part. And each chapter then has a story. So the first part of the book, the first level of the nighthouse, the hidden rooms and the wild skins, my intention for that first third of the book was like, let's let these stories be very interesting, but not particularly terrifying. Let let some of them be maybe even familiar.
Wendy:Kinda ease the reader
Danielle:into the process. Get in, and then we'll see what happens. But then in writing that first part and choosing the different stories that would go in that first part, it all magically aligned that they would would have, like, the magical garment in them, or they were, like, these shape shifting stories. So, Little Red Riding Hood's Red Hood, for example, or the shape shifters feathery pelt. So there was a theme that emerged as I was writing that.
Danielle:So there's still, I think, the most palatable stories in the book, but they all are bound by this idea that there is this, magical skin that we sometimes wear. So that's the first third of the book. Then the middle third, the bone cellar, that's where the gnarly shit is. So that's we can look at that like that's the red door. Okay.
Danielle:Lot of those stories do have a red door in them. And so that's where there's there's some death and grief rituals. There's some banishing and working with protection rituals from this really cool version of Bluebeard. And then the last third of the book is the spirit tower, which is kind of just the weirdest. Like, it's it's the dream work.
Danielle:It's the getting weird with time, I call it time fuckery sometimes I don't use that phrase in the book but yeah it's what I thought.
Wendy:But you should.
Danielle:I should yeah but I did it and so that's the structure of the book in terms of how to use it each of the stories has three different rites or rituals. So sometimes that's a spell. Sometimes that's just like a threshold crossing. So there's varying levels of expression for those three rites. And in writing it, like in writing all of my books, I know that not everybody is going to do all of these rites and rituals that I hope that they do, but I also know that that's not the way it goes.
Danielle:So it's totally fine to read the book as I know a lot of people have. You know, read the book and read the stories. And all you really need to do is after you've met one of these stories for the first time, and the secret is it's not really unique to the stories that I chose. So you can really do this with any fairy tale, with any myth, with any old story. Once you encounter it, you just ask after the story's over, what's one question that I still have?
Danielle:Like, what do I still wonder now that the ever after has come, the story's over? It's usually something frustrating that a character did or there's like a plot hole or something like that. And so you name that question and then you ask yourself why was that my question? Like, how is that the very question of my life right now? And it works every single time.
Wendy:Nice.
Danielle:So even if they stop there, like, that's fine. They don't have to cast the circle, build the altar, and do all of the other things that are in there. They can just do that and that can give some time you can even just do it with one story and it'll give you enough medicine. So there's definitely different levels of expression in the book where you don't necessarily have to go all in. But if you want to, you can.
Wendy:Or you can come back to it another time when you feel more ready. Yeah. So what do you think it is about reading a story that way, getting to the end of an old fairy tale, and then asking that question. Like, what do you think you're tapping into
Danielle:Yeah.
Wendy:By asking that question?
Danielle:Yeah. Well, two things, I guess. The the first thing is I really have come to a firm belief for me that these stories have this hidden intelligence, like an energetic current that runs through these stories. And that that energetic current, just like, you know, if anybody would be a practitioner of energy medicine, the idea that the medicine always goes straight to the wound no matter what, so it doesn't really matter like what the practitioner is thinking and you know, can't really screw it up and do it wrong. These stories work in the same way where they seem to go exactly where they need to go.
Danielle:When I'm in a circle of people and we all share those missing pieces questions at the end, everybody's question is different. Everybody comes to this different epiphany from the story that doesn't match anybody else's, even if they seem to be kind of the same type of person. It still seems to be very unique to them. So there is something kind of otherworldly that feels like an energetic current, almost an electric current that runs through these stories that just goes where it needs to go every time. So there's that.
Danielle:And then I think in another way, the stories are just like any other oracle, you know, the oracle cards or the tarot or the pendulum or whatever, the dream, whatever you use in your practice, that just really reveals to you what you already know. So, you know, when you work with an oracle, it's just kind of mirroring back to you the hidden knowledge that was there anyway. You just kind of didn't realize it until the oracle showed you.
Wendy:Okay. So I just wanna make sure I understand. So you Mhmm. You read, let's say, The Red Hood, Red Riding Hood.
Danielle:Mhmm.
Wendy:And the thing that you're stuck on is, like, I'm just I'm drawing a blank. I I Yeah. And like, you you come up with something that is just unsettling about, like Yeah. Why did it go this way instead of that way? Or why did she say this and not this or whatever?
Wendy:Right. And you insinuated that it it's it's hitting a wound.
Danielle:Mhmm.
Wendy:Or it's bumping up against a wounding of yours.
Danielle:Yeah.
Wendy:So, like, you're unconscious of speaking through that question or that frustration you have with the story?
Danielle:Yeah. It doesn't have to be a wound. It sometime it often is, but it could be, like, just a worry or attention or some kind of an ache. Usually, the question that emerges, it doesn't just have the it it has what I call the wish and the worry wrapped inside of it. So it's not just the achy bit, even though I do think a lot of the time that's the most important bit is the achy bit, but it often has the wish or the desire in that same question.
Danielle:So for example, I did just work with the Red Hood this past weekend with a group of women. And one of the questions that came out was like, why didn't the grandmother protect herself? Like she lived in this woods her whole life. Like did she not know that there were wolves around that might come into her house?
Wendy:Great question.
Danielle:And so, you know, the the the wish would be, you know, to to maybe recall the the wisdom of the grandmothers or to to be able to be vigilant or something like that depending on what that person's interpretation of the the question was. Then the worry is like, you know, what if I'm missing something? You know, what if given everything I've lived through in my life, I'm forgetting some important piece of wisdom that I need to protect myself? So so, you know, that's kind of the starting point. But then, yeah, you can dig into that worry about, like, what if I'm not being vigilant enough or what if I'm forgetting an important part of my ancestral wisdom and then, you know, figure out where to go from there, whether it's a a healing spell that needs to be cast something a bit more mundane.
Danielle:I mean, therapy or sometimes having a conversation with the grandmother, like something like that. So the direction that you go after that is there's infinite possibilities. But yeah, that initial question has often the wish and the worry wrapped right inside of it.
Wendy:That's very cool. And I I love just that that sort of indirect but very direct way of getting there.
Danielle:Yeah. Yeah. And how it works, it works every time. I still don't really know why. I haven't really found anything else in my witchcraft that like works for everybody in a circle every time and that really does.
Danielle:Even the even the the witch adjacents or people that don't identify as witches.
Wendy:But that speaks to the power of story. Mhmm. Especially these ancient stories. Right?
Danielle:Yeah.
Wendy:That, like you were saying, I guess, the origin is a giant mystery, but they're universal. They're universal stories, I guess. And and at least the themes show up around the world.
Danielle:Yeah.
Wendy:Like, archetypes.
Danielle:Yeah. Right. The archetypes, even the even the plotline sometimes is very similar in these in these strange ways. So, yeah, I just love thinking about, like, why and how could the Handless Maiden exist in Germany and Africa and it's the same exact plot. And it's a weird plot too.
Danielle:It's not like it's not a typical hero's journey, I don't think. And there's a Jungian idea that the stories originated in somebody's dream. So, you know, when there was no television or anything else to talk about, we'd wake up like we still do today and be like, you're not gonna believe what I dreamt about. And, you know, that was whispered down the lane for then centuries, if not thousands of years, and it became this fairy tale that we know now. So, of course, we don't know if that's true, but I do love that idea.
Danielle:I hope that that's true.
Wendy:I yeah. I'd like to hope that's true too. There's a a weird kind of sense it makes.
Danielle:Yeah. Yeah. I think so. And then, you know, I also love that we still I mean, even even fairy tale nerds like me still kind of have this embodied sense of dismissal with the the phrase fairy tale. There's, like, you know, just something it's not like I love fairy tales.
Danielle:This is the heart of my work, but if I'm scripting the, description for a workshop or something, I'm very careful about using the phrase fairy tale because I know that there's a lot of there's something in us that doesn't take it seriously and that that's necessary. It's necessary that part of us doesn't take it seriously and looks at it as if it is just a children's story. That's how these stories were able to survive through throughout times in history when they would have otherwise been hunted or or outlawed because they had spells and rites tucked in witch's charts tucked inside of them, but they were just children's stories. So you know?
Wendy:So disguised, basically.
Danielle:Yeah. And, likely not on purpose. And so going back to this hidden intelligence that's in these stories, they kind of knew how to get away. Like, that's the way I look at it anyway, is it wasn't necessarily collective agreement among the weaver women and the midwives. They were going to just like, let's pretend these are really children's stories.
Danielle:I don't know that that happened. Part of me hopes that that happened. But that they were perceived in that way allowed the stories to survive relatively intact. Like, you know, the I I can see this in myself when I when I go to revision a story, like, let's say there's an ending that doesn't sit well with me, and I wanna make it a little bit different. It the the story really resists that.
Danielle:There's, like, this this fidelity that you have to have to the story that seems to be true more of these fairy tales than it does of, say, a myth or another type of old story. So, yeah, I really feel that they are alive. I know that that's weird for a lot of people to understand. Not you, but Yeah. A lot of people.
Wendy:No. I I I yeah. I feel I'm a I feel like I'm always giving that caveat too. I know this is weird, but hang in there with me. Yeah.
Wendy:But just consider. But yeah. I mean, just just think about how that story has been such a a potent tool in human history since we've had language. Right? That's how we've taught important things
Danielle:to
Wendy:each other, how we've remembered our ancestral lines, how we remember medicines, how we remember dangers, and
Danielle:Right.
Wendy:Things to celebrate, things about the natural world.
Danielle:Yeah. And that we dream like, that's what I come down to when people discount the power of story. I'm like, we dream in stories. Like, every dream is a plot line. You know?
Danielle:When when you're talking about a dream to somebody and you're like, so I'm walking down the road. I mean, that's the exposition. That's the once upon a time, then you always get to a crisis, which is the climax. And then you might not remember or get the resolution or the license at the end, but sometimes you do. And there's this whole narrative arc in a dream that happens when we're sleeping.
Danielle:So, you know, our brain is telling us stories.
Wendy:So, yeah, what is your relationship with dreaming?
Danielle:Oh, I'm a huge dream nerd. Yeah. Yes. Dreams are probably, like, my primary navigation system. And so Yeah.
Danielle:If I'm in a place I call, like, a dream dry chapter of my life, which I forget which of the the dream nerds that I follow. I think doctor Steven doctor Steven Eisenstadt, I think, is the one who said this where, like, if you if you are in a dream dry period where you you normally remember your dreams, but you aren't for several months or whatever, that you're just on the cusp of this great, like, personal initiation because you don't really recognize yourself in the dream. So something that I believe that isn't part of my my work but I do believe this Eric Wargo is one of the dream nerds. He's not witchy in any way. He's a scientist but he's his theory is like we we our our brains are kind of pre metabolizing the future through our dreams all the time.
Danielle:And so every dream in his theory is prophetic, and you just have to dig out the symbols.
Wendy:And so This is a scientist guy saying this.
Danielle:Yeah. Doctor Eric Wargo. Yeah. He studies the brain. It would be more like neurology than witchcraft.
Danielle:But it is so cool. I mean, you would love it because, especially as a writer, his latest book is all about artists and writers and how we're essentially, like, we are predicting the future when we write. That that's it's coming from our own future self. And so and so if in your dreams, you are your future self. If your future self is so weird because you've become someone so new, you wouldn't recognize them.
Danielle:And so you don't remember your dreams because they're coming from future you who's just so different post initiation. We don't know necessarily what's gonna happen there to make you that version of yourself. But when you're in the dream dry period that it might just be, you know, who you are in that dream is kind of inconsistent with who you believe yourself to be with now when you're awake.
Wendy:And so It's a readiness thing. You're not quite
Danielle:Yeah. Right.
Wendy:You're not
Danielle:really gonna remember. Mhmm.
Wendy:Or you're going through menopause.
Danielle:Yes. That too. Yes. That too. I mean, talk about becoming somebody totally new.
Danielle:Oh, yeah.
Wendy:Yeah. Or actually yeah. Like, maybe more more you.
Danielle:True version. Yeah.
Wendy:Yeah. A more you version of you.
Danielle:That's Yeah.
Wendy:That's what I'd like to think. I could be blowing smoke up my own ass, but but I'd like to think that.
Danielle:Yeah. I hope so. I'm, like, in it. Are you? Oh.
Danielle:I am in it. Yeah.
Wendy:It'll get better.
Danielle:Yes. Thank you.
Wendy:It'll get better. Maybe your memory. I seem to have lost mine. Anyway, so yes. So, yes, the power of story.
Wendy:While you were talking about dreams Mhmm. Just now, I was thinking about how how very dreamlike fairy tales are.
Danielle:Right. Yeah.
Wendy:I hadn't really thought of it until just now, unless you already said it, and I it didn't really click in my brain parts. But
Danielle:No. I don't think so. But I mean, it yeah. It's like, what came first? Did you know, do we dream in this fairytale way because of fairytales or were fairytales somebody's dream?
Danielle:Yeah. Exactly. Or both. Or both.
Wendy:Yeah. Yeah. No. I love that. Thing that makes a fairy tale so different than, say, a murder mystery.
Wendy:Like, if you're gonna read fiction, you read a fairy tale versus a murder mystery as an adult, let's say
Danielle:Yeah.
Wendy:Is the symbolism. Right. If you think about it, right, because a murder mystery, it's like a a little slice of everyday life. And some some bad shit happens, and then a bunch of police come, and then they try to solve it, and then you're fall whatever. I don't know.
Danielle:But Right. I don't
Wendy:know why I'm I'm like the the king of bad analogies, and this is but but the power of symbolism. I mean, we're kind of touching on this a little bit when you're talking about Carl Jung and the archetypes. But do you have any thoughts on just how rich the symbolic world is and why there's so much magic in that world?
Danielle:Oh. I mean, the the thing that's coming up, my initial response was no. I don't believe you. I mean, I really I I have believed since I where did I come up with this? I don't know.
Danielle:Maybe when I was getting into when I was getting into witchcraft and, know, had had maybe a few spells that worked and, you know, kind of wanted to know why. And I think I've always had a kind of healthy skepticism and I, one of my favorite mantras is like, witches always want proof. Like, you know, we want proof that the magic is real. We, you know, we cast spells because the last spell worked. So, you know, if you get to a place where it's boring and it's not working anymore, then you would stop doing it.
Danielle:So I was I really love this book called Where Science and Magic Meet by doctor Serena Roney Dugle. I think it's pretty old at this point. But, like, I remember reading that, and and she was very skeptical and scientific in trying to pick pick out these different reasons why not just magic works, but also, like, psychic activity and energy healing and all of these different kind of mystical practices that are ancient. Sounds a
Wendy:cool book. Yeah.
Danielle:Yeah. It is. It's a very cool book. And I think in that book, she talks about this dance between the the implicate realm and the explicate realm and, like, you know, that the implicate realm is what's hidden. So ancestors, fairy, the other world, even maybe alternate timelines, like anything that we would say is maybe there and also bizarre and less provable by science, that everything originates there.
Danielle:And then it gets made manifest in the explicate realm that we can see. So thinking about this hidden original birth place for everything as being like the seat of magic. And so, you know, if we are talking collective unconscious and where these different symbols might live, I would say it's there. And then it gets made manifest in this explicate realm where, you know, we try to make sense of our lives and go to work and fall in love and do all of those things that we do.
Wendy:Exactly. Yeah. No. I mean, you just that that's a very shamanic description.
Danielle:Yeah. It's
Wendy:Of the unseen world because to me that is the world of of information, and the information is perceived symbolically.
Danielle:Right.
Wendy:And those symbols all have stories to tell.
Danielle:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Wendy:And so it's it's as if these fairy tale authors are tapping into the unseen realm and pulling these stories out, or maybe these stories are landing in their psyche somehow in a dream or or in some kind of altered state, perhaps?
Danielle:Yeah. It's I always recommend to people that are getting into storytelling, like, speak it out loud as much as you can. Like, you know, writing is still cool, and I get that. Yeah. But when you tell the story out loud, it's different every time.
Danielle:Like, every time, it's like a totally new, like, not just encounter with the story, like, totally new, like, falling in love with the story. Like, a whole relationship life cycle goes on when you're telling that story even if you told you've told it 10,000 times, and you do have a sense that there the other world is speaking through you. Like, not the whole time because you're getting, you know, like, did I forget to tell that part? And, you know, you do all that.
Wendy:Did I use the right tense?
Danielle:Yeah. Exactly. But but you always have at least one and usually more moments where you just, like, feel yourself speaking, and you're like, I don't even know where this is coming from. You'll say a word you never say, you'll start to describe a character in a way that you just had never thought of before. So it's that spontaneous telling of the story I think that you know the other world's always there, I think, and trying to come through story, even if you're writing them down.
Danielle:But when you're speaking out loud, you get that proof in the moment that that is true. And I think you, we all need that as storytellers, like, proof that, like, oh, this really isn't coming just out of me. I am not the source of this thing. I'm the channel for this thing.
Wendy:Wouldn't it be cool if we could just access that as adults with ease. Yes. Because there's so much wisdom there. Right? As kids, we're open to it all the time.
Wendy:We live there.
Danielle:Yeah. Yeah. That's interesting that you say that because, like, you know, when we're kids, we have all well, we encounter all the wounds about fear of being seen and, you know, is the art worth anything and all of that? Then that gets amplified and repeated throughout adulthood. But there's something about having it witnessed that seems important.
Danielle:Having the story witnessed that I think, like, you know, when you're a child, you don't really care who's listening to you, but then you have
Wendy:that Exactly. Yeah.
Danielle:Original wound of, like.
Wendy:Criticism. Being too loud
Danielle:or Yeah.
Wendy:Exactly. And then that that just dampens the works.
Danielle:Yeah. And then there's that fear of having it witnessed, and the witnessing is the thing that makes it come alive, I think, because the stories want to move. They want to travel, so they want to be heard
Wendy:by Yeah. It's heartbreaking, isn't it? That we do that to ourselves.
Danielle:Yes.
Wendy:That we do it to each other, I should say.
Danielle:Yes. Yeah. It is. I know. So many so many people all hear that I'm 45 and they'll be older than me and saying, like, oh, I could never be an artist or I'm not creative and, you know, this painting is stupid.
Danielle:And like, no.
Wendy:Good. I'm glad you're saying that because that's that's that's sad. And it's not true.
Danielle:Sad. It's not true. I know. Sometimes it's beautiful, you know, whatever it is they're showing. It's like, look at this amazing thing that I created, and then they'll be like, but it's worth absolutely nothing.
Wendy:Oh, what does that even mean? Right?
Danielle:Right. Right. I know.
Wendy:So do you have an example of how a story in your book has either helped you or someone else just to kinda give listeners an idea of of how this can work? Like a simple example.
Danielle:Example. Well so there's a there's the story that I referenced before that I said is one of the gnarlier ones that's in the bone cellar. I think in the book, I call it the mage's bird, but the original title is Fitcher's bird. So it's the German collected German version of Bluebeard. And it's a gnarly I mean, Bluebeard's gnarly anyway.
Danielle:This is, like, a really gnarly version of Bluebeard. And it's one of the few stories that I I had a group of people come to my land last summer, and we just swam in this story for, like, five days, and we did all of these different rituals around this story. But it is very of the warrior archetype. So there's a lot of thinking about in your life what you seem to have been preparing for. So given all of the trainings that you've taken and the certificates that you collect and all of those things that we do, And not just that, but the the books that you read, if you've been training or preparing for something, given the patterns that are in those things that you've done and studied, what might that great spiritual battle be?
Wendy:Nice.
Danielle:And so, you know, that's the warrior archetype, but that that story of the mage's bird, it's like that. You know? Unlike the more common version of Bluebeard, the French version that's more familiar where the youngest sister kind of is very victim the whole time. In this version, she's, like, got the plan the entire time, the youngest sister. She's like, we're gonna take this guy down, and she disguises herself.
Danielle:There's this ritual drama that's housed inside of it. And then at the end, she essentially, like, burns his house down with him in it. And not only that, but all of the people that knew what he was doing murdering these women, they get burned alive too. Damn. Okay.
Danielle:This really epic ending at the end. But the whole time, it's like about the strategy. So like, I know that that that helped a lot of people feel a sense of empowerment at a time when the world story was definitely in this place of chaos and lack of clarity and where were we going. And, you know, not that it's not still there. I was
Wendy:gonna say was. Yeah.
Danielle:But, you know, but if we think, like, back to to, you know, 2024, the vibe was this very peculiar, like, you know, we could go that way or we could go that way.
Wendy:Oh, yeah. Yeah. It was the the before.
Danielle:Yeah. It felt like a crossroads moment, and it felt for a lot of people that were with me anyway, like, defeating. You know, that was sort of the what everybody was vocalizing is, like, how do I plan for my life when I don't have any idea what the world's gonna look like in six months. So yeah. So harnessing and then amplifying that warrior archetype through that story was was healing even though it is a gnarly story, and we weren't burning anybody alive.
Danielle:When we were here, there was still this sense of, like, what if we have the plan? You know, what might the plan be? Yeah.
Wendy:Yeah, that is what you just described is the power of story.
Danielle:Right. Yeah. Yeah. Archetypes are like these these kind of energetic bubbles of power and meaning. So if you can tap into certain archetypes through story, you can do it in other ways too, but through stories kind of the easiest way because we're surrounded by stories all the time.
Danielle:So the archetypes are alive in the Netflix series that everyone's watching or, you know, doesn't have to be in a mystical fairy tale. They're still very much alive in the modern stories. So you can tap into that energy that you need when you need it. And usually that's not a conscious decision. It's like, you know, the Netflix series that you're watching.
Danielle:It's because you need a little bit of that archetype in people. Yes,
Wendy:we do.
Danielle:And so there's always, like since you brought up murder mysteries, you know, there's a lot of conversations around, like, why women especially, like, love to watch the murder mystery documentary.
Wendy:True Crime. Yep.
Danielle:True crime. And it's like, it's preparation. That's part warrior bird woman from that story. It's it's it would be weird if there were I feel like it's weird when men love watching the true crime documentary. When women watch it, it's because we want to know.
Danielle:Yeah.
Wendy:We're strategizing. Exactly. Mostly about what not to do. Yeah. Jesus.
Wendy:So if someone would like to learn more about you or your work or hang out in the Hag School, how would they go about doing that?
Danielle:Yeah. So, website, danielledolesky.com is, like, my main website, and then the hagschool.com has its own virtual spot to live, but all of the things are there, and I hope they do.
Wendy:I hope they do too. So this has been fun. Thanks so much for coming on.
Danielle:Yeah. Thanks so much for having me.
Wendy:Alright. Are you ready to get your witch on? You can learn more about Danielle and her offerings at danielledelsky.com or join the Hag School at thehagschool.com. Thank you for listening and for hanging in there with me since 2018. I wanna thank Stephanie and Johanna with every cell of my body for their ongoing support of the podcast.
Wendy:Your support is so appreciated. Not only does it help alleviate some of the costs of producing each episode, which averages about seven to eight hours each, and is the reason why I can only put out an episode every three or so weeks. But it also tells me that you'd like me to keep going. So thank you. If you're enjoying the podcast and you'd like to help out by making a donation of any amount, please look for the support this podcast link at the bottom of the show notes.
Wendy:Getting additional support could help make it possible to release even more episodes more frequently, which means I wouldn't have to turn down so many potential amazing guests, which are quite a few. I'll be back in a few weeks where we'll be traveling into the liminal realms of shamanism and lucid dreaming with a lovely, highly experienced mother and daughter team. Until next time.
