Trans Magick: Suffer a Witch to Live

In Trans Magick: Suffer a Witch to Live, a coven of witches sues the Christian god for peace in a court Between the Worlds. It is a satirical, sardonic, comedic romp that nonetheless addresses some deadly serious issues in religious tolerance and lack of respect for difference that have gone on for thousands of years. Parts of the novel are dire due, life and death, yet much of it works with quirky characters and absurdity to shed light on things that have been going on—and that many people believe should happen.

Trans Magick is set in a small town in Kansas, the Buckle of the Bible Belt—a region of the world just gaining indoor plumbing, that most people hadn’t noticed even really exists, that has struggled on an official, state level with allowing evolution to be taught in schools, or how to how it should be referred, struggling to include Intelligent Design into class rooms. After a hate crime against the coven, and the ruling of a local judge the coven can no longer circle, the coven summons a tribunal of three Celtic gods who are ready to dispense justice. The gods encase the entire town in a 9 mile radius sphere to capture everyone present, prevent anyone else from entering, and then they inspire conflict between the witches and the Judeo-Christian fundamentalists within, bringing their three thousand year war to a head. The rest of the world learns about the war and tries to interfere, but it seems only the witches, and the Pope, are allowed. The climax of the story, however, does involve the entire planet as major changes are made.

Jessie Lynn Lyons, the High Priestess of the coven, is transgender neutrois, self-defining as variable, no particular gender that fits a binary description, or gender fluid. Because she was born overtly male, she prefers the feminine pronoun and reference to help balance an implied masculine gender. After several reincarnations, dealing with issues of herself, social justice, and witchcraft through millennia, she has come to believe that a binary gender limits her ability to connect with the energies of the cosmos, the All Power, the Goddess, as it tends to harmonize with the identity or nature internalized. For Jessie, the cosmos is everything, both masculine and feminine, and she finds ecstasy in harmonizing with All.

Wicca in the Coven of the Silver Moon is eclectic with symbols and tools, practices and beliefs self-inspired or taken from several different schools of thought. If one is familiar with the Craft in various popular forms, Gardnerian, Cochranian, Correllian, etc., coven workings will be familiar, yet nothing herein is meant to imply any particular Tradition.