There is a legend in St. Thomas, Ontario. It began in the 1970’s, when a tombstone made of porous white sandstone began growing darker with each acid rainstorm. School children took notice. It stood out, the lone black stone in a sea of white marble. They whispered to each other about ghosts and devils, but if a child dared to come closer, they would have read the inscription:

Maria

Daughter of Edw. Ermatinger Esq.

and wife of the Rev. Maurice S. Baldwin

Formerly of this place

Born Nov. 25, 1840, married Sep. 4, 1861, died Feb. 10, 1863

Until the day dawn

Perhaps it would have prompted more questions than answers. Why was she “formerly” of this place? What made her leave… or was she forced to? And why did she die so young? Maybe she was a witch.

There is a legend in St. Thomas, Ontario. The same one that exists in small towns across the country. An old cemetery. An odd looking gravestone. A woman who died too young. Or instead, a woman who lived too long. A maiden, a crone, a sorceress, a witch. The reality is a different story.

Maria Ermatinger Baldwin was born into a prosperous family. Her father, Edward Ermatinger, was the owner and editor of the St. Thomas Standard newspaper and was later elected to Parliament. Maria was one of seven children and at the age of just twenty, she married the reverend of the church where she would later be buried, Maurice Baldwin. The couple moved to Port Dover to begin their life together and Maria was soon pregnant with their first child. That’s where her story ends. Like many women of the time, Maria died from complications of childbirth. She was twenty-two years old. She returned to St. Thomas in a funeral carriage.

There would be another inscription added to the bottom of her tombstone:

Maria Louisa

Daughter, born Jan. 30, 1863, died Sep. 15, 1863.

According to church records, Maria Louisa was baptized on the day of her mother’s funeral. She died 8 months later.

The inscription on Maria’s tombstone would have you believe that being her father’s daughter and her husband’s wife were the defining features of her short life. Her mother, Axie, is not mentioned in the inscription, nor are her sisters, Annie and Frances (who also died at twenty-two.) They are buried nearby, under an impermeable metal monument that did not blacken with age or weather.

If the Old St. Thomas Churchyard is haunted, it’s not by a witch. And if you’re spiritual, if you believe souls go on after death, you would (of course) hope those souls were at rest. But I can’t help picturing the spirits of the Ermatinger women meeting a midnight, halfway between their monuments, laughing together under the stars.

Card 1: What is Dead. And ending has occurred and you must acknowledge it with gratitude and move on.

Card 2: What is Buried. Something exists deep within you. Do you let it stay buried or do you dig it up?

Card 3: What is Haunting You. What lurks on the fringes of your imagination? What wants to be conjured up? What needs to manifest?

I took the liberty of pulling a few cards for us:

Card 1: The Magician

Stop trying to make something happen. You need to loosen your grip. Let it be. Don’t hold too tightly to a goal or vision of the future. You may have to walk away completely and embrace a new idea.

Card 2: King of Hearts (Cups)

Your intuition and creativity are begging to be brought to the surface. You may need to reign, whether you feel qualified or not. Take the lead. Be calm. Pay attention to your dreams. Something is gestating and it will soon ask to be born.

Card 3: Six of Pentacles

You are both appreciative of what you have and longing for more. You recognize the need for balanced giving and taking. Don’t be greedy but don’t be a martyr either. There is something waiting for the opportune moment to emerge. Embrace a spirit of gratitude and your next step will be revealed.

Let this tarot reading be a torch in the cold November night. The whole path is not revealed, only your next few steps into the darkness.

This thinness also meant that lost souls wandered the earth, searching the night for living bodies to possess. The tradition of wearing Halloween costumes comes from this ancient belief. It was thought that by disguising yourself as a fellow spirit, the ghosts would mistake you for one of their own, giving you safe passage on dark October nights.

It’s not possible, from the comfort of the modern world, to fully understand the existential dread experienced by the Ancient Celts as the leaves began to fall. We live in a world where store shelves are stocked with Christmas decorations before Halloween even arrives. Where we can sample an unending supply of tropical fruit year-round and even have it delivered to our doorstep. While the threat of Autumn scarcity was palpable to the Celts, it’s almost imperceivable to us. For them, the membrane between worlds became permeable as the natural world slipped into decay and dormancy. Death seemed closer in October than it did in June, when the sun was high and the days long.

We still feel this intuitively. It lurks beneath our modern consciousness, surfacing every now and then when we notice how early the sun has started setting or see a frost warning on the weather forecast. The veil is less literal for us. Instead of being a universal human experience, it has become an event to attend. The veil covers our own eyes now and each one of us must decide when and if to lift it.

The ghosts and skeletons staring out at us from store shelves act as a reminder that the time has come. We attend a ghost walk or a paranormal investigation and start thinking about the thinness of time and the people who lived before us. All of a sudden, a fun event becomes cause for contemplation. We might not slaughter animals as the Ancient Celts did, but we watch as characters are slaughtered by horror movie villains. Death is still lurking, even if it’s only celluloid.

I encourage you, this Halloween, to lift the veil from your eyes. Look around you for evidence of the supernatural. Light a candle in your window as a beacon for passing spirits. Sense your ancestors lurking in dark corners. Walk through a cemetery and remember your mortality. Consult a Ouija board about what waits for you on the other side of winter.

Dip a toe into the murky waters of the Great Beyond.

Nine of Wands - October begins with a feeling of tiredness. You have shown resilience when confronted with obstacles and have persevered in the face of setbacks. You must gather your strength for one last battle.

Wheel of Fortune - Whatever you are battling, it appears that you come out on top. There is relief in sight as the wheel turns in your favour. …

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Seance Checklist

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I had the pleasure of being a speaker at the Paranormal Research Symposium in Gettysburg last month. My presentation was title “The af Klint Method: Creating Channelled Art by Recreating Hilma af Klint’s Séance Technique.” Part of the presentation was a Séance Checklist, a quick guide to holding your own séance and, with practice, creating your own channelled art. The method is inspired by the séances held by HIlma af Klint’s Spiritualist group, The Five, and includes a step-by-step process for following in af Klint’s footsteps while making the séance your own.

I’ve attached the handout to this post for anyone who is interested. Please test out this method and let me know what you think. If you get any results or create any artwork, I’d love to see it!

Here are some photos from the trip, including a dedication to the women of Gettysburg:

I have the innate Piscean ability to walk into any vintage store and fish out, pardon the pun, an object belonging to my astrological sign, often a Pisces mug or necklace. A few weeks ago, I wandered into a local vintage shop and was drawn to a bin of old handkerchiefs, mostly white with embroidered trims or monograms. Among these items, I spotted one with words printed on it. Upon unfolding it, I saw that it was an astrological handkerchief for the sign of Pisces. I did a bit of research and discovered the handkerchief dated from the 1960’s and was likely manufactured in Stoffels, Switzerland. These handkerchiefs seem to be fairly common. You can find several on Etsy, for example, with the design written in German, French and English.

Although I didn’t initially feel any spooky vibes, I planned to do an experimental psychometry session to see if I could pick up on any impressions from the handkerchief. I wanted to test my abilities and see if I could come up with any psychic insights. I was hoping that, because I’m a Pisces and the person who had owned this handkerchief was likely a Pisces, there was an energetic link between me and the object.

I lay down with the handkerchief folded over my eyes like a blindfold, while playing alpha wavelength music through noise cancelling headphones. I began counting backwards from one hundred, a method I use to open my mind and drop into a meditative state. Because I’m a witch, I asked for protection from the goddesses I work with and from my wise and well female ancestors. I then inhaled deeply and let my mind go blank, waiting for any messages or images to cross my third eye.

I didn’t receive any messages, but I did have a vision of the handkerchief’s previous owner. She was a white woman with short, brown hair and brown eyes. She looked to be in her forties. She wore thick gold earrings and had long nails painted with a frosted lilac polish. She often wore purple clothing. She pulled the handkerchief out of a western style, leather satchel. The whole look and feel was very 1980’s. I got the impression that she’d owned the handkerchief since she was a teenager in the 1960’s, when she’d received it as a gift.

She seemed like a happy, fun woman with a big personality, but that’s only what I picked up on psychometrically. As far as I can tell, there are no spirits attached to the handkerchief, just a lot of good memories. Maybe another look, closer to Halloween when the Veil is thin, would reveal more details but I’m comfortable declaring this item Not Haunted… at least for now.

If Anna Nicole Smith were a man, she’d be viewed with the romanticism reserved for Old West icons like Jesse James. She’d be a true American outlaw. Born into nothing and pulling herself up by her bootstraps, she’d be the quintessential American success story if it weren’t for the fact that her bootstraps were breast implants.The American obsession with female sexuality is nothing new, society was wrestling with it long before the country even existed. The Aphrodite of Knidos, for example, created by Praxiteles of Athens in about the 4th century BC, was the first statue in Ancient Greece depicting a female nude. It was one of the most copied statues in the ancient world and, once painted, was so lifelike it became the object of many men’s attention. So much so, that a man broke into the Temple of Aphrodite one night and attempted to have sex with the statue. Upon being discovered by a temple priestess, he was so embarrassed he threw himself off a cliff. The Classical version of hiding Playboys in the garage.

This is what it means to be kissed by Aphrodite, not to be beautiful but to be perilously alluring. Comparisons can be made to the Medusa myth; instead of turning men into stone with one look, these women invoke a dangerous amount of desire just by being perceived. Perhaps this curse is fated; it was certainly in Anna Nicole Smith’s stars. Her birth chart is a recipe for male obsession. For the astrologically inclined, she has Venus and the Moon in her first house in Libra and Mercury in Scorpio in her second house. Judging by her birth chart, she was destined to be a famous model, but her background was far less glamorous. A poor teen mom who dropped out of school in the ninth grade, Anna Nicole Smith ended up working the day shift at a second-rate Houston strip club. Stuck making midday tips because she was considered too flat chested for the night shift, she decided to take matters into her own hands. She dyed her hair blonde, saved up her tips, and purchased a set of 36DD breasts. Her new body helped her secure a marriage to an 86-year-old oil tycoon and landed her in the pages of Playboy. You could say she was a self-made millionaire.

It was only a short time before Hugh Hefner christened her Playmate of the Year, both the apex of her career and the first nail in her coffin. Anna Nicole became another silent dumb blonde staring out at men from a glossy page, like Marilyn Monroe, her idol, and Jayne Mansfield before her. Like the Aphrodite of Knidos before them all. To be sexually desirable to men too often means being a silent image, a life-like statue, a dumb blonde. Certainly not a three-dimensional woman with a personality, opinions, or dreams.

What happens to these women, these dumb blonde archetypes whose humanity has been sidelined for success? How does a woman live once she’s been turned into an object? Many of them simply do not. Anna Nicole died at 39, Marilyn Monroe at 36, and Jayne Mansfield at 34. They’re part of a line of actresses who became known as dumb blondes and subsequently met their fate before the age of 40, including Jean Harlow, Carole Lombard, Sharon Tate, and Brittany Murphy. Never mind the over twenty Playboy Centerfolds, Anna Nicole, Marilyn, and Jayne included, who died before the age of 50, many due to overdose, murder, or suicide. All victims of what’s been labeled the Centerfold Curse. These women are easily replaced by a newer model, another unsuspecting 18-year-old, and are forced to retreat into obscurity or vanish altogether.

Why would Aphrodite send so many of her daughters to slaughter? After all, the dumb blonde is a cultural construct. To paraphrase Dolly Parton, these women knew they weren’t dumb and they also knew they weren’t blonde. But whenever a person becomes the subject of so much judgement and attention, there’s usually something bigger at play. These modern day Aphrodites of Knidos hold up a mirror so that society might see its own reflection. And, if we bothered to look, we’d see that we are ridiculous. These women can’t be both the scapegoats of our moral panic and frivolous airheads unworthy of our focus. They can’t both deserve punishment and be trivialized as disposable entertainment. All women know how it feels to walk this impossible tightrope. Because how society treats dumb blondes is how it treats all women. Often by ignoring them when they speak.

Anna Nicole Smith was the canary in the coal mine for the opioid epidemic. Her 1.4 litre breast implants were a constant source of back pain. The medication needed to cope with the body she’d created was prescribed in higher and higher doses. To remain relevant she needed to keep her breasts, despite the fact that doing so required multiple reconstructive surgeries. She eventually became her own Frankenstein’s monster, the body she created turning against her. The world laughed while she struggled and ultimately died of addiction instead of showing her compassion. Likewise, Marilyn Monroe’s death was a harbinger of society’s mistrust of the government. Rumours swirled that it was the Kennedys and not an overdose that ultimately took her life. She died, after all, less than three months after she sang Happy Birthday to President Kennedy. Jayne Mansfield’s death foreshadowed the rise of the paparazzi and tabloid culture which, by the early 2000’s, led to the public’s insatiable appetite for stories about celebrity downfalls, including Anna Nicole Smith’s untimely death in 2007.

There is no blueprint for the crone era of the dumb blonde. There’s no second act. However, in the last few years, perhaps as a result of the Me Too and Times Up movements, women have begun to reexamine their relationships with these figures. We took the Playboys out of their hiding spaces. We rethought our opinions on pop princesses like Brittney Spears and Jessica Simpson. We’ve reconsidered the label we inflict upon so many young and vulnerable women, a label that seems to sanction their horrible treatment by society. It’s as though sometime around 2018 women suddenly remembered how we laughed while watching these women suffer addiction and mental health issues. Or maybe we just woke up. Either way, the dumb blonde has become a Rorschach test of our feminism. She’s ours to reclaim, to revere, to deconstruct. And when women are ready to listen, the dumb blonde regains her voice.

Women like Pamela Anderson get a second act. Emerging from the shadows, she gets to tell us about reading Jungian philosophy in her trailer between takes on the set of Baywatch. She gets to be a fully formed human being, with all the scars of a woman who barely survived the tabloid culture of the 1990’s. She gets to live out her crone years under the reverent gaze of us, her sisters. And I imagine Aphrodite is happy. That this is what she wanted all along. To show us ourselves, to show us who we really are by creating women we couldn’t look away from. And now, by saving these sidelined blondes from obscurity, women may finally rescue themselves.

The complex web of patriarchy through which women view the world often gets in the way of helping each other. It’s only in the last few years that the veil has been lifted. We are now clear-eyed enough to recognize that how we treat one woman is how we treat every woman. In the year 2025, when the subject of the dumb blonde comes up, women will rush to tell you that Anna Nicole Smith was smart enough to find a way out of poverty, that Marilyn Monroe had a personal library of over 400 books, and that Jayne Mansfield spoke five languages. But as any woman with a pretty sister knows, this kind of unwavering support is easier said than done. The dumb blonde archetype is something we’re still unpacking. A new crop emerges in every generation and the dumb blonde archetype evolves, reflecting the state of our current society. Need proof? Just look at Sydney Sweeney.