Queer and Trans Witchcraft w/ Brooke Palmieri
Spirits
Multitude
4.8 • 2K Ratings
🗓️ 25 June 2025
⏱️ 49 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
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
- Books: Check out our previous book recommendations, guests’ books, and more at spiritspodcast.com/books
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Sponsors
- Bookshop.org, where you can now use the code we shared in the midroll to get 10% off your purchase!
Find Us Online
- Website & Transcripts: spiritspodcast.com
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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
- Multitude: multitude.productions
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.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The |
| 0:07.0 | The Welcome to Spirits podcast of Boosy dive into mythology, legends, and folklore. |
| 0:33.6 | Every week we pour a drink and learn about a new story from around the world. |
| 0:37.2 | I'm Amanda. |
| 0:37.9 | And I'm Julia. |
| 0:39.4 | And we are so excited to be joined today by author, artist, activist. |
| 0:44.6 | It's Brooke Palmieri. |
| 0:46.0 | Brooke, welcome to the show. |
| 0:47.5 | Hi, it's really lovely to be here. |
| 0:49.0 | Thanks for inviting me. |
| 0:50.2 | We're always so excited to talk to witches of any kind, any creed. |
| 0:55.6 | But Brooke, I was particularly moved listening to you read from some of the essays from your upcoming book, Bargain Witch |
| 1:02.7 | essays on self-initiation. But first, can you tell our audience a little bit about you, a little |
| 1:08.0 | bit about your work and where they can find the book when it comes out in October. |
| 1:12.6 | Well, thanks for being so excited. This is a subject near and dear to my heart, so I'm very excited to be with kindred spirits to talk about it. |
| 1:19.8 | Good pun. Good pun. Oh, that's right. Now, I use spirits as such a common word in my vocabulary. I realize now now in this context, it will always be a double entendre. |
| 1:30.1 | So thank you. |
| 1:31.4 | We picked it for a reason. |
| 1:33.9 | Yeah, very, very elastic word, very versatile word. |
| 1:36.8 | So first things first, I guess something that comes from the very beginning of the book, |
| 1:41.8 | 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 |
| 1:52.5 | and mystery and just not having all the answers, for me, like, love of witches is also the |
... |
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