08/10/2024
Introducing 🕯️
Reclaim the Hammer.
The newest iteration of my madness. A rebrand, a glow up, a refocus. Don’t worry, my products will remain the same (perhaps there will be even more some day??) just with a new updated look.
Naming my business after the Malleus Maleficarum carries its own heavy energy. I chose to carry this energy because carrying the Latin name demonstrated how long women have been kept down, controlled, silenced in our culture. It is now my intention to live on the path of reclamation. I want to move forward from holding and sitting in the pain both physically and metaphorically with a new brand identity.
For those that don’t know the Malleus Maleficarum (or Latin Mallevs Maleficarvm) was a book written in the 1400s as a treatise of witchcraft, claiming that it was heresy (going against the catholic church) to practice it. It outlined, in detail, what types of people and personalities could be identified as witches, and described exactly how they should be tried and punished. Unsurprisingly, femininity and women in general were specifically identified as practicers of witchcraft. The book would serve as a how to for witch hunters for the following 100+ years, leading to an estimated million people (mostly women)to be burned at the stake. Malleus Maleficarum translates to Hammer of Witches. It was written to do away with witchcraft, to separate women from each other, to strip away our power. And it worked for a long time, we hid in the shadows, spoke in whispers, forgot teachings from the earth. But when they tried to bury us, they didn’t know we were seeds. And now we rise up again, reclaiming the hammer that has been swung upon us all.
This rebrand has taken me so long to finalize-with many months of dragging my feet and not feeling like I was *ready* to share. I know having a business name that is easy to read and spell is good for my business, but WOW have I resisted it. I loved my little exclusive club, where only the real ones get it, and everyone else is not allowed 😈. The historical reference is more hidden now, but I think it has opened the possibility for more parallels to be made.
How will you reclaim the hammer?
