Anarchist, philosopher, mystic, revolutionary. I’ve seen many exciting words used to draw the portrait of Simone Weil.

But the moment I read her described as “the patron saint of all outsiders,” by André Gide, I knew I needed to add Simone Weil to the Missing Witches pantheon of witches, weirdos, mystics, imagineers and imperfect rebels. I knew I needed to read her work.

Simone wrote, ““Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.” So let’s pay attention to Simone today, in this space between our ears, bestow upon her story that rare and pure form of generosity that is the currency of modernity. Today, let’s give her our attention.

This mystic philosopher lived her life as an offering to the suffering of others, an embodiment of radical compassion. She didn’t just speak on justice; she, in her way, became it. She entered the factories, breaking her body to feel the pain of the workers. Her hands blistered as she wrote of oppression, each word dripping with the weight of lived experience. Simone saw beyond the illusions of power, piercing the veil of comfort with a fierce devotion to the downtrodden. She fed her soul with hunger, fasting in solidarity with the oppressed, her body a vessel for their grief.
Her altruism was magic woven through action, a spell cast for liberation. She refused the safety of distance, of intellectualism without skin in the game. Simone called out to the divine - her life a chant of solidarity with the most invisible among us.

Her life, like yours and mine, was a magical dance with contradictions—an ascetic who craved the world's pain, a revolutionary who sought God in every breath. Contradictions that belied a supreme, singular focus and singular goal. The Truth. But as we’ve discovered in our own lives, dear Coven, real Truth is never simple. Simplicity is never simple.