Witching Hour Theater

The Long Dance moves like one long night, and this is the moment it starts filling up. Calling Aradia was the invitation, the empty circle waiting for someone to answer. Down Off the Hills is everyone answering. Picture the path down from the hillside in full dark, one shape after another stepping into the firelight. Wine poured, passed hand to hand, a cup filled past its rim and nobody minding the spill. A vine still hung with fruit tied to a post at the clearing's edge. A woman who walked alone the whole way down finally standing in the warmth. A girl too young to have done this before, both hands wrapped around her first cup, wide eyed at everyone around her. A fiddler tuning up by the fire before she's played a note. A rootworker straight up from the porch, drinking without breaking stride. A woman setting down an armful of vine and dried wood she carried herself, and the one keeping it all moving, refilling cups, making sure nobody in the circle goes without.

That has real precedent. In ancient Athens, one day of the Anthesteria festival was called the Pithoigia, the opening of the jars, marking the moment the previous year's wine was finally ready to drink. The city opened it together at the sanctuary of Dionysus, and for the festival's duration the usual household order was set aside, slaves drinking alongside citizens. The wine gets opened, and the circle widens to hold everyone in it.

The Long Dance is out now.

She was sent to teach the oppressed to fight back. Tonight we call her in.

The Long Dance is not a story in the strict sense, but it moves like one, one long night, one arc, fifteen songs. Calling Aradia is the first beat. This is the opening. This is the invitation. Picture the circle before anyone else has arrived, only the faithful, candles kept burning through seven winters, doors left unlocked on the chance she finally comes, cups and kindling and a song laid out at the center of the clearing. This is that waiting. Then the calling itself, the exact moment right before everything else in the night gets to happen.

That calling has real history behind it. In 1899, an American folklorist named Charles Godfrey Leland published a manuscript he said an Italian witch gave him. It told the story of Aradia, daughter of the goddess Diana, sent to earth to teach the poor and the oppressed the craft they needed to fight back against the landlords and the Church holding them down. Historians still argue about how much of the tradition was real, but the text became one of the deep roots of twentieth-century Wicca.

The Long Dance is out now on Spotify, Apple Music, and YouTube Music.

Every tradition that survived kept a version of the same figure at the edge of its rites, a horned consort invited in for a night and never allowed to stay past dawn. The Celts called him Cernunnos. The Greeks called him Pan, then Dionysus. The Romans called him Faunus, then Bacchus. The Slavs called him Veles. This is the one track on our new album that says the loud part out loud instead of dancing around it. The Long Dance goes live tonight, it may already be up by the time you're reading this.

TITLE — "The hour was never hers alone, vol. II" / "five more women who ruled, wrote, and endured, and the ones who never left their side"

Penelope & Eurycleia (Greek myth, the Odyssey) — the queen who outwaited her suitors for twenty years by unweaving her own loom work, and the old nurse who recognized the beggar at her door by a scar on his knee and kept the secret until her queen was ready to believe it. Image: Waterhouse, Penelope and the Suitors, 1912

Circe & her handmaid-nymphs (Greek myth, the Odyssey) — the witch-goddess who could turn a man into a pig with a poisoned cup, and the nymphs who kept her halls running regardless. Image: Waterhouse, Circe Offering the Cup to Odysseus, 1891 (deliberately picked for the cup echo)

Wu Zetian & Shangguan Wan'er (China, ruled 690-705) — the only woman to rule China as emperor in her own name, and the poet she raised from the daughter of an executed enemy into her own private secretary. Image: Tang Dynasty Empress Wu Zetian portrait (secondary option if wanted: Shangguan Wan'er portrait)

Empress Teishi & Sei Shonagon (Japan, court served c. 1000) — the empress whose court glittered with wit as her family's fortunes collapsed, and the lady-in-waiting who wrote it all down (the "snow on the mountain" line is the real Pillow Book anecdote about Xianglu Peak). Image: Lady Sei Shonagon, LACMA ukiyo-e via Commons

Mary, Queen of Scots & Mary Seton (Scotland, served 1548-1583) — lost two kingdoms, kept composure to the scaffold; Seton was the only one of the Four Marys who never married and stayed until her own failing health forced her away in 1583, four years before the execution. Image: Mary, Queen of Scots, after Nicholas Hilliard (no Seton-specific portrait exists, same as Vol 1's Blanche Parry)

Long before there was any way to send a group text, communities used fire to gather with each other. The old Celtic bel-fires were lit on hilltops specifically so the whole valley could see them and find their way toward the light. Down Off the Hills is our version of that walk toward the fire. Wine poured, vine and stone and flame doing their part, the circle already dancing before you even arrive. Second release as Witching Hour Theater, out now on Spotify, Apple Music, and YouTube Music. Come find us.

we could not agree on what salt was actually for, so it turned into a full cartoon fight. pow

which one is salt to you: the wall, or the welcome?

the hour was never hers alone. five women and the ones who stayed.

every thorn is a tooth. every petal is a prayer.

three centuries at the same window, and she has outlived every man who called her witch and whore, every man who nailed her sisters to the floor. she does not drink for hunger anymore. she drinks for remembrance, for a quiet vow. salt for the threshold. moon for the glass. thorn for the rosebush. bone for the past. she waited a century to hear a voice at the door, and she will wait no more.

we are not monsters. we are what remains, and what remains decides what it is called.

the countess' lullaby.

hush now, sister. there is nothing to fear.

three hundred years they called her a monster. she outlived every man who said it, and she kept the candle burning at the window for the ones still coming. we are not monsters. we are what remains, and what remains decides what it is called.

the countess' lullaby.

a witch is just a woman who remembered her own breath. the title track from our new EP, the hours are ours, now streaming. salt, moon, thorn, bone. the hours are ours, and you are not alone. step in, the tea is warm.

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Witches know the Cypress has seen a lot. The coven knows that the Cypress has many stories. it has a lot of history; it might even have some answers. But just because it has answers doesn't mean it will share them with you. A meditation on speaking to something seven hundred years old. You set a cup at its roots, pour a little sassafras, and you do not ask it for anything. The Cypress Remembers is on our new album, streaming everywhere now.

The Hours Are Ours is now available on Streaming services

The Hours Are Ours is out everywhere. Rock, Rap, Southern Gothic, all witches heed the call. We are not alone.

Now it lives on every shelf you stream from.