The entire saga began with a thread created on December 8 of 2015 in a secret Facebook group known as the Queer Witch Collective (QWC), an online faction of LGBTQ magic practitioners that was around 2,000 members strong at its height. On this date, Ender Darling, a member of the collective, wrote that they had started collecting human bones from a so-called "poor man's graveyard" in their neighborhood to use in their magic practice. "Most graveyards around here are full of above ground graves because we live in a fishbowl. But there happens to be a graveyard where it's all in-ground graves," they offered. "You can literally walk around, see femurs, teeth, jaws, skull caps, etc., etc. This is where I go to find my bones for curse work and general spells that require bone."
Others sought to ensure that Darling's practices were ethical by magical standards. "Are you making any sort of offering or payment at the graveyard, to the dead or the spirits of the land?" one user questioned. "I bring drink and honey and flowers," Darling responded, later clarifying that they never actually dig for bones, but merely take what they find along their path. "Me and my goddess have a pact," Darling explained. "She provides the bones if I only take what the earth gives, and I leave offerings."Within a few hours, however, other members of the collective began to harshly criticize Darling. The first critique came around 10 o'clock that evening, when one witch commented, "No!!! Let them rest in peace!!!!" Darling offhandedly rejected this, and other members defended them. So did the QWC moderators. One mod—let's call her Violet—wrote, "I am really sad that someone is acting like this is grave desecration when it's literally taking what the earth washes up so they don't go into waste treatment???"I am really sad that someone is acting like this is grave desecration when it's literally taking what the earth washes up.
"All burials in Holt Cemetery are below ground, which is not ideal because of New Orleans being below sea level," explains Amanda Walker, the director of Save Our Cemeteries, a nonprofit organization that aims to preserve the graveyards of New Orleans. According to Walker, Holt Cemetery is "extremely crowded, with nearly 60,000 interments," and those buried in below-ground plots there are exposed to elements that disrupt their graves. "Flooding is an issue in Holt and always has been," Walker explained. It is the combination of these three factors—subterranean burial, an overabundance of bodies, and heavy rain—that causes human remains to surface in Holt Cemetery.You are implementing white supremacist and colonialist tactics to do your bidding.
Violet—the same voice of authority who had previously rejected member claims of grave desecration—seemed to alter their position in response to this line of criticism: "I support people discussing the use and distribution of racialized people's bones, especially bones of black people (which very well may be in this graveyard) being given to non black or esp. white people," the moderator wrote.Darling agreed, hoping to encourage open discussion: "That's a great idea please." But it was too late: Members and mods had already spent several hours virtually dismissing, or shutting down, the concerns of group members. Disgusted, some members left the collective altogether, perhaps to "find an actual traditional coven that isn't full of creepy white and white passing folks who want to trample on traditions because they found free bones," as one user wrote in their final post.Read more: Witches Allegedly Stole Penises and Kept Them as Pets in the Middle Ages
Another Tumblr account quickly appeared, apparently created by Darling in an attempt to respond to the controversy that had overtaken Tumblr. They explained their behavior at length, making the argument that they were trying to salvage the bones from destruction. They wrote that they had been in the unnamed graveyard tending to things, trying to neaten up the weed-ridden graves, when they saw "an old man digging with a shovel and a backhoe, tearing into old plots." The user claimed that they made a snap judgment after seeing "a few bones tumble from the dirt and into the street.""I picked them up and went through the graveyard and picked up ones I saw on my path, knowing that they were either going to be crushed or swept away," the user continued. "And I'm sorry, but for me, a spiritual person who works with death, seeing a fucking machine tear into graves like that seemed a lot less respectful to the dead you all are so concerned about than me picking them up and saving them."But regardless of their justification, what Darling did in Holt Cemetery is technically a felony, according to Walker of Save Our Cemeteries. "It is illegal, and ultimately, disrespectful" to gather human remains from any cemetery, she affirms, adding that surfaced bone fragments are common, and that there are legal and ethical ways to respond to them: "They are not 'there for the taking' simply because they are exposed to the elements."Hear me, bone wytch, and know that you are forever cursed. So say I, the fae of femurs.
As the Tumblr post and ensuing debate went viral, it arrived on the radar of mainstream media outlets, many of which treated it as a strange novelty case: a collective of overly-PC witches caught in a quagmire of theoretical ethics over an instance of potential grave robbing, who had taken to hysterically calling each other out on Tumblr. Buzzfeed published an article explaining that "this person might have robbed graves and Tumblr is going insane"; New York magazine published a similar piece, noting that Tumblr users were "either outraged or amused" at the alleged grave-robbing.At some point, people began referring to the controversy as "Boneghazi."As Boneghazi reached its dramatic climax, law enforcement began conducting an investigation into Ender Darling for the potential trafficking of human remains. Their home was raided on January 28, 2016, and they reportedly left the state. On April 11, the New Orleans Advocate published an interview with Darling, who blasted law enforcement. "They were coming in seriously expecting to find bodies and human organs and have me and my roommates arrested for black-marketing human remains," Darling said. "You should have seen their faces when they walked into the house and found a bunch of sleeping hippies."They are not 'there for the taking' simply because they are exposed to the elements.
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Trying to explain their initial empathy towards Darling, Dakota added, "There is an immense amount of shaming directed at [African diaspora religions] by white witches, whether it be about animal sacrifice, hexing, cursing, jinxing, etc. All I saw was a [person of color] being attacked for their practice, even if it's something I did not understand or would never do myself."There's a long history of using human remains in magic; necromancy, the magical communion with the dead, dates back to ancient Rome, Greece, Egypt, Persia, and Mesopotamia. There are mentions of necromancy in the Bible and, before that, the Odyssey. According to Alex Mar, author of Witches in America, a five-year survey into the covens of modern-day pagans and Wiccans living in the United States, Darling is probably "someone who is curious about necromancy and necromantic practices." Darling "may be interested in African diaspora religions, like Palo Mayombe," she adds. (Palo practitioners are known as Palero, and Mar clarifies that the practices Darling describes doing would not be recognizable to them. Mar, who has many contacts in witchcraft communities throughout the country from her years of research, notes that the witches in New Orleans who she spoke with about Darling's case believe Darling's behavior to reflect inexperience and irresponsibility.)There is an immense amount of shaming directed at [African diaspora religions] by white witches.
As seen in Darling's defense of their practice, some people who repurpose human remains for magical reasons sometimes believe that they're doing a service to the dead, or "giving them a more exalted next life," Mar explains. But who makes that determination? Who decides when a spirit has actually granted consent, or whether or not that once-living person would want their skeleton taken, however casually, from the cemetery where it was buried?"It's clear to me that the serious magical practitioners that I have met and spoken with: there's always a balance being struck ethically between the mundane and the spiritual; what you do for the sake of your spiritual practice," Mar says. "I just can't imagine any of those people arguing that it should take precedent over basic respect for human life and consent in the mundane world."There's always a balance being struck ethically between the mundane and the spiritual; what you do for the sake of your spiritual practice.
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For the members of the QWC, however, none of this is humorous or strange, and the fact that the group's moderators appeared to initially be uncritical of Darling represented a violation of the group's most sacred founding principles. While Darling continued to remind critics that the group had a "no shaming" policy, the argument had no power any longer. Other witches dismissed it, firing back: "There is a difference between shaming and questioning possible ethics and possible oppressive practices—why are we silencing a black witch?"After Tumblr had brought the debate viral, the Queer Witch Collective's secret world began falling apart. Darling quit the collective of their own volition shortly after the start of the bones discourse. Dakota, the white witch who had founded the group, apologized to the remaining members: "I'm sorry everyone, even after trying my best I have fallen short," they wrote. "I'm sorry." Their apology was not accepted, and they eventually left after months of harsh criticism. "I don't think white witches are inherently bad," Violet wrote one day. "I do however think Dakota is irredeemable, based on the fact their aura is rotten AF."The controversy around Darling and Dakota tore the QWC apart, and now that they were both gone, the group struggled to feel comfortable again. Many people of color were disgusted that so many white witches had allowed the bones discourse to occur and had not immediately and unilaterally condemned Darling's behavior.The moderator who took over in Dakota's wake tried to fix things: She removed the "safe space" label from the group's description to honor the fact that the sense of safety they once felt in the collective was gone, maybe forever. She suggested that white witches remove themselves from the discourse and simply listen to witches of color. "Every single white witch just needs to stop posting, period," she wrote. "At the very least, stop posting asking for a spell, for a specific thing. That's not how this shit works. It's not a drive thru window. We are trying to decolonize our minds and bodies while you are asking us for McMagic." In the fall of this year, the new admins committed a total purge of all members, save for the moderation team. Witches are allowed to re-submit applications for membership, though it appears few have done so. There are currently just 77 queer witches in the collective.Does anyone else notice that the crystals themselves are despairing and hurting?
Today, from the outside looking in, the Queer Witch Collective is a virtual ghost world, where nearly 2,000 witches vanished as if the rapture came. In the weeks and months following the bones discourse, people in the collective seemed to be drained, as if they'd expended too much energy during that long winter online. Probing existential questions appeared on the feed—questions about the violability of an immortal soul, and the right for a witch to harness magic in skeletal remains."When and how is it ethical to use human remains?" one witch asked herself. "Who has the authority to grant permission to use another's body, even after death?" begged another. Answers were emotional, disjointed, theoretical. "You could ask us or others for permission—or you can dig up your own grandma," someone suggested. One witch idly worried about their own kin becoming tools for the necromancer. "Some members of my fam are catholic, and it's very important to them that they get to rest in peace," they wrote. "I don't want anyone to take that from them."Others sighed, shrugging off burdens too big to shoulder. "I'll pray to my gods," one mage pledged, "not the democracy of witches."We are trying to decolonize our minds and bodies while you are asking us for McMagic.