Workshop "We are modern witches"
A workshop into Gossiping, Fortune Telling and Fan Movement

May 26th 2024
Protagon Theater Frankfurt

“We are the granddaughters of the witches you couldn’t burn.”
Hi, I am Yinfu, a good witch specializing in fortune telling, dancing and healing. I would like to invite you to my workshop “We are modern witches”, inspired by Silvia Federici and the book Caliban and the Witch. I found out the “witches” were people like me, who may love tarot reading, know about herbs and have talent in healing. I developed my own “witchcraft” and would like to share some practices :
1. Gossiping & Secret Sharing
Instead of ‘idle women talk', the word “Gossip” used to indicate close female friends, also implying that “women could create their social networks and their own social space”and stand up to male authority.
What about building up a sharing circle for secrets and gossip ?
2. Folding Fan & Dance Movement
In my hometown Hunan, China, there is a way for women to create a secret communication —“Nüshu女书”, the world's only surviving alphabet made exclusively for and by women. Folded fan was the medium to carry women’s secrets.
We will create collective movements and experience the traditions of “writing on fan”, “exchanging fans with each other”, “reading fans”, “dancing with fans”.
3. Tarot card reading & Blessing
As excellent witches, we will share some methods of fortune telling in different cultures and read tarot cards together. At the end of the workshop, we will write some blessings on the self-made folded fans and make them into oracle cards !