Speaking & Workshops
The work is political. The magic is practical.
Dana Batista is a Southern chaos-folk magician and democratic socialist author writing where baneful folk magic, civil liberties, and class struggle meet.
Her talks and workshops draw from thirty-six years in practice, from the traditions and research behind Venēnum: A Field Manual for the Baneful Arts, and from the lived politics of bodily sovereignty, community defense, and survival without permission.
Topics
Baneful folk magic & practical ethics
What intentional harm means when it is treated as boundary, consequence, and responsibility rather than edgy decoration.
- Hexes, wards, curse work, and baneful boundary rituals
- Ethics beyond “harm none” and the politics of consequence
- Working-class, unbranded folk practice and its living context
Civil liberties & bodily sovereignty
Why the right to make decisions about your body, safety, and spiritual life is a magical question as much as a legal one.
- Surveillance, institutional power, and the everyday work of staying sovereign
- Self-defense, protection, and the cost of enforced silence
- Reading case law, lived experience, and ritual practice together
Class struggle & community defense
Magic as a set of tools for defending people, caring for a community, and naming the structures that close ranks against them.
- Class, power, and the politics carried in spiritual practice
- Community-defense workings and collective care
- What survival, resistance, and solidarity ask of practitioners
Venēnum & the poison path
A look at the finished field manual, under contract negotiation with Inner Traditions, and the material modern witch books often scrub from the page.
- Historical poisoning, plant lore, and practitioner-focused research
- Thornwork, covered-name wards, and structural bloodline diagnostics
- Building an ethical spine for difficult, intentional work
Short bio for listings and press
Dana Batista is a Southern chaos-folk magician and democratic socialist author. She writes where baneful folk magic, civil liberties, and class struggle meet, and has completed Venēnum: A Field Manual for the Baneful Arts, under contract negotiation with Inner Traditions.
Bring the work to your room.
Available for talks, workshops, panels, and media appearances. Tell me what you are planning, who it is for, and what kind of conversation you want to hold.