Scout Boxall: Daily Affirmations from Four Powerful Medieval Women
Power
〰️
Power 〰️
Image: Nick Roberston
The Edinburgh Fringe is back for 2026, and with it, our annual feature series! This year, we’re taking on POWER: Who’s got it? Where is it? Where should it be? How do you get it? Our comedians are the only ones with the answers.
By Scout Boxall
I truly believe that the kind of behaviour that got you canonised in the Middle Ages would see you lobotomised in the 1950s and performing at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 2026. I’m not particularly religious but I have always been drawn to medieval female mystics. I mean, they’re all just queer-coded undiagnosed neurodivergent weirdos who dodged their social responsibilities by answering a higher calling. What’s not to love!
So here are affirmations you can use from four powerful medieval women. Invoke them each morning consistently for best results. May you have watered crops, clear skin, an empty inbox and lovers aplenty.
Hildegard von Bingen (1098 - 1179)
“I am a feather on the breath of God.” (Symphonia)
Dedicated to a monastery at eight years old, Hildegard became a moral, spiritual and scientific authority in a time when only one in five women could read or write. She experienced agonising episodes that left her blinded and bedridden for days. Were they seizures? Migraines? Messages from God? Who cares? Hildegard was the most prolific creative and intellectual mind of the Middle Ages.
She created her own language, composed her own music, and wrote treatises on natural history as well as letters to popes and emperors. She founded two convents which employed the second daughters of wealthy families to manufacture and sell tinctures. It’s giving medieval multi-level marketing. She’s the earliest recorded new age girl boss. She walked so Gwyneth Paltrow’s Goop could run! This affirmation is best enjoyed with a poultice of sage and fennel, a shot of hyssop leaf tea.
Joan of Arc (1412 - 1431)
”I am not afraid. I was born to do this.” (Transcript from Trial of Condemnation)
At thirteen years old, saints and angels told her to get a bowl cut, wear pants and join the French army. Ok, Cadet Kelly! It’s a butch dyke coming of age tale if ever I heard one. Joan went from illiterate peasant girl to a military force of nature, driving the English from her homeland. She liberated Orleans from its seven-month siege and turned the tide of the Hundred Years War.
She was finally captured by the English and burned to death for being a cross-dressing heretic. (Diva down!) As her nonbinary pussy was literally on fire, she looked her persecutors in the eye and smiled. A blueprint for all the staunch queers and butches who have carried forth the flame of resistance, justice and sovereign self-determination. So clip on your carabiner, fasten your protest pins and take to the streets! God gives his brightest torches to his staunchest Dykes.
Margery Kempe (1373 - 1438)
“The more slander and reproof that I suffered, the more I increased in grace.” (The Book of Margery Kempe)
Move over Sylvia Plath, Margery Kempe was the original Sad Girl. Margery endured postpartum psychosis and experienced a visceral, spiritual conversion and became a mystic. She would bawl her eyes out in public as she preached to anyone who would listen from street corners. She was repeatedly charged with heresy but successfully defended her case in court, consistently outarguing magistrates and church authorities.
Eventually Margery left her fourteen kids and merchant husband to embark on a series of pilgrimages to Jerusalem, Rome, Spain and Poland, a sort of medieval Contiki Trip. Imagine Eat, Pray, Love — except it was more like Weep, Pray, Shrove. Her dictated autobiography is the first work of memoir in the English language. So if anyone ever tells you that you’re too difficult, too wild, too feral or emotional, tell them to go fuck themselves. Let your earthly detractors fuel you towards tear-stained psycho excellence.
Julian of Norwich (1342 - 1416)
“All shall be well and all shall be well and all manner of things shall be well.” (Revelations of Divine Love)
On the brink of death at thirty, Julian began to receive divine visions called “shewings”. After recovering from her illness, she sought enclosure at St Julian’s Church in Norwich and lived out the rest of her life in seclusion as an anchoress in a sealed cell. Hers was a life of isolation, poverty and chastity. She was, however, allowed to provide prayers and advice to pilgrims. Julian received regular revelations from God about the nature of Her divine will.
She believed that the Christian God was not a fire and brimstone punitive daddy, but a compassionate and joyous feminine force of love. Jesus is literally (divine) Mother! He’s serving Fish (and loaves) to the children! He’s topping (saving us) from the bottom (crucifixion)! All of this was too radical for the 14th century but eventually Julian found her teachings disseminated in Ariana Grande’s “God is a Woman” (2018).
Scout Boxall: God’s Favourite is running at Assembly George Square (The Box) from Aug 5-30th (except Mondays), 16:20. Tickets here
Read more about Edinburgh Fringe 2026:
