The Fox and The Moon - Creating Ix Chel
Hi! Welcome to our weekly Fred & Dan newsletter: Why Aren’t You Famous Yet? This is a continuation of our blog series that takes you behind the scenes of our newest script: The Fox and The Moon. If you aren’t caught up yet, you can read about the lore of the script here and Janette’s research on Celtic lore here.
Trepidation, and impending rage has riddled me leading up to this moment. Like I said before, I wanted to write The Fox and The Moon because I’ve never felt seen in magical stories. But knowing the lack of representation of magical Indigenous lore in mainstream culture, I was scared I wouldn’t find anything.
Happy to report that I was able to cobble some things together. I’m sure there is exactly what I’m looking for out there somewhere but, I haven’t found clear lore, customs, or specifics. In fact, a weird thing kept happening during my research. Every time I searched for any iteration of Tejano Witches my internet crashed. I would search something else, reload, no problem. I would try again, internet crash. After far too many attempts I had to give it up.
From all across southwest America (I tried to keep it specific to Mexican American Indigenous lore rather than American Native) to down in Central America there are many similarities in the witchy lore I’ve discovered. I reached down to the America’s because the ancient empires of Inca, Mayan, and Aztec made up what is now Latinx culture of the Americas.
Okay here’s what I’ve learned:
Aztec witches were ordinarily held in high esteem because their “black” practices were believed to have been assigned by the gods.
Mayan’s believed in Ixchel, a death god equated by the Spaniards with the Devil.
Día de los Muertos originated in ancient Mesoamerica (Mexico and northern Central America) where indigenous groups, including Aztec, Maya and Toltec, had specific times when they commemorated their loved ones who had passed away.
Ancient Mesoamericans believed that death was part of the journey of life. Rather than death ending life, they believed that new life came from death. This cycle is often associated with the cyclical nature of agriculture, whereby crops grow from the ground where the last crop lies buried.
Indigenous societies, pre colonization, recognized the importance of women in society through their contribution of giving life.
For Native American people, witchcraft is just another part of their spirituality
Ancestry, life after death, and spirits of past ancestors is the bedrock to channeling any power
This is just some of what I’ve found; there’s also what I’ve learned from my own oral history and speaking with fellow Tejanos, Native Americans, and Mexican Americans. Based on all of that here’s what I’ve woven for the lore of our main character Ix Chel:
The tribe Zyanya (ZYAH-nyah - meaning forever/always) is said to be the reincarnation of its coven’s first people. In each life as in the last, they grow and learn to be in service to the rest of humanity. When they pass through the veil they are reborn and come back to earth as a descendant of their past self. The Zyanya people hold the wisdom of their predecessors as part of their essence, and they are able to call on that ancestor and others of their past. The entire tribe pulls their highest wisdom and seeks counsel from the first of their kind (and the first of all witch kind) the Goddess Divine. No one knows who is the direct reincarnation of this Goddess but she is said to be the beginning and end, the God of all the Gods.
The people of Zyanya hold the responsibility of being the key, the doorway to life and death, with the utmost respect and reverence. So those who can physically create and give life are those who make decisions and guide the tribe. Understanding themselves as neither here nor there, they see themselves and their magic as always holding light and dark, good and bad. Both are necessary and both are important.
So when one of their daughters Yolotli (Yoh-LOH-tLee), became lost in the veil (life beyond death) after a stranger from a distant coven came to the Zyanya people, they took part of each of their own powers and wove together the strongest protection spell they could. This spell would keep them from the eyes of outsiders for hundreds of lifetimes to come. Closing themselves off to the outside world, to their role as part of a bigger whole, and to anything new, the Zyanya people have not come in contact with another coven in hundreds of years. That is, until a young Celtic witch from Ireland, Fox, shows up in the middle of this small Texas town on the eve of Halloween, Samhain, and Dias de los Muertos.
When I first started this research I was afraid I wouldn’t find anything. I love to tell the stories of the human experience beyond the explainable, life beyond death, and personifying the fact that we as women are the creators of life. I guess you could say, the fear of people forgetting our powers drives me. I fear for them ;)
