Missing Witches - WF Benebell Wen： It Meets You Where You Are, And Then It Will Take You To Higher Ground.

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00:01:39.880 Welcome listeners. Welcome witches. Welcome practitioners from all corners of the world.

00:01:48.440 Welcome rainy days and kids frantically playing hide and seek downstairs.

00:01:55.140 Welcome whatever spirits are with you today.

00:01:57.800 Welcome home to the Missing Witches podcast and welcome especially to my guest. I'm so excited to have you with us today. Your incredible research is just such an honor to get to dig into. I have been pouring over your footnotes and tables and just basking in the thoughtfulness of your research.

00:02:23.500 So Ben and Bowen, thank you so much for being with us on the Missing Witches podcast.

00:02:28.540 Thank you for the research in this super important missing book that you are bringing into the world on the I Ching, returning it to its shamanistic origins and putting it in this context that I feel like was really missing.

00:02:43.560 Thank you for being here.

00:02:45.360 How are you on this?

00:02:47.760 Hi, Risa.

00:02:48.520 I am fantastic now that I am under the glow of your presence.

00:02:53.500 welcome under the glow my my hot overheating running around mom glow is all yours come come

00:03:00.780 and bask under it that's the best glow so isn't it though there's a magic to it for sure yes

00:03:07.220 yeah yeah how's it been for you well one we have the same publisher we work with different people

00:03:13.640 at north atlantic but you've been there for all three of your epic tomes how's that 2012

00:03:19.860 Wow. Yeah. How's that process been for you?

00:03:22.840 It's been fantastic. And also seeing them evolve because it's been 10 years. So I started working

00:03:27.960 with them in 2012, 2023 it is now. So yeah, over 10 years and just watching them evolve,

00:03:33.800 watching them grow, getting them to see them more recognized even in the mainstream and seeing them

00:03:39.260 branch into different subject areas. So it's been fantastic to be with North Atlantic.

00:03:43.800 I'm so glad to hear that. Yeah. We really enjoyed it too. What's that process like for you now?

00:03:48.740 you're you're this third book I mean I wish I could show people I'll put pictures up but

00:03:54.100 there is so much like this how long were you working on the I Ching book oh oh so when I say

00:04:02.620 I've been at it for 10 years it's not like you know what I mean it's not like I'm sitting there

00:04:06.940 24 7 365 working on it for 10 years but of course doing over it for I would say well over a decade

00:04:14.920 I had most of the translations, just the translations part of the Zou Yi, the I Ching, done before Holistic Cario even was released in stores.

00:04:25.960 And then I just kept noodling with it and noodling with it. 0.93

00:04:28.620 And then I guess I just, I always felt like I'm too young to have anything wise to say about the I Ching. 1.00

00:04:35.540 And then also I think that's my own stereotypes. 1.00

00:04:37.220 I'm always picturing like old men with like, or like some old white dude in an ivory tower who has like 55 degrees. 0.99

00:04:45.660 You know, so I'm like, who am I to like, you know, comment on the I Ching?

00:04:51.340 And then so then, but then I guess like the more I read different perspectives and different commentaries, I realized it's actually really obscure, the original text itself.

00:05:01.160 And so a lot of what I think is the understanding of the I Ching is one individual's perspective.

00:05:06.440 And then there's just different voices over the centuries that get platformed and become the dominant perspective on how you interpret these really big, obscure lines.

00:05:16.540 And so when I thought of it that way, I'm like, well, actually, you know, if you don't like my perspective, that's fine.

00:05:23.500 But I have the right to go out there and put forth my perspective.

00:05:27.580 So that gave me more of a boost or confidence to then actually comment on the E-Chain.

00:05:33.500 Oh, and I'm so thankful for that.

00:05:35.540 I'm thankful for sharing that shift in perspective because you did the research to know that this

00:05:42.440 overcompensation this yeah but also that this this is an accumulation of these really kind of

00:05:48.960 hierarchized points of view like hundreds of years of summary and now we start to think that this is

00:05:54.040 how it is but going back into the research to be like well that was also somebody saying how they

00:05:59.440 thought it was. And I'm allowed to say how I think it is. It's a really empowering idea.

00:06:05.940 What was it like working with your editor? How did they draw the process forward for you?

00:06:11.620 What did they help you figure out that you hadn't figured out when you came to them with this text?

00:06:15.880 Wow. So I think the biggest one that really leaps to mind. So because there's a specific

00:06:23.280 tone of discourse on the I Ching in Chinese and Asian languages, which is fine, that's great. And

00:06:28.820 then there's a specific discourse on the I Ching from the Western perspective. And a lot of that

00:06:33.520 came from Christian missionaries. And then that became the dominant voice in the West when you

00:06:38.320 think of interpretations of the I Ching and even how the text is translated. And so when I was doing

00:06:44.220 a lot of the research, I came across some perspectives from like, you know, James Slagg,

00:06:50.480 Wilhelm, that I kind of, even Carl Jung, that I felt like were very, I wasn't sure quite how to

00:06:56.940 talk about it, right? How can I be objective, but still, you know, show that it's not everybody's

00:07:03.820 perspective, that it kind of distorted what you would get if you received the discourse only in

00:07:11.600 Asian languages. I'm not even saying Chinese or classical Chinese, even in Korean and Japanese

00:07:16.180 and Vietnamese. When you get it in, you know, Asian languages, that perspective is very different

00:07:20.760 when it doesn't have that, you know, Western European and specifically Christian, you know,

00:07:26.640 hot enough over the E-chain. And so they really helped me work through some of the beginning

00:07:32.000 chapters, how to talk about it. And even when I came across things that were offensive,

00:07:38.480 I was like, well, I don't want to include it, but then I don't not want to include it. So what do

00:07:45.340 I do with that? And so a lot of these questions, open-ended questions, Jillian really helped me

00:07:50.260 work through that. And so if it wasn't for them, I don't know how I would have navigated it.

00:07:54.940 Oh, I feel the same way about working with Jillian. The only thing I ever want more of from Jillian is more Jillian insights, you know, push us more. Can you talk more about those origins of the I Ching? I found that part in the book so thrilling. There's so much I don't know. My ignorance here is enormous. So I just appreciate anything that you can share.

00:08:19.060 But talking about this sort of like twin figures, an ancient flood, they're spinning together like that.

00:08:28.160 Yeah, I want to go to the back.

00:08:29.360 We're going way back.

00:08:30.760 All right.

00:08:31.280 Take me to the bones.

00:08:34.060 Okay, Risa.

00:08:36.440 Please.

00:08:37.380 Okay, so that would be the Bagua eight trigrams.

00:08:40.300 So there's this mythology that we're not the first people on this planet.

00:08:45.740 there was the first people they got wiped out by a great flood and there were two remaining people

00:08:51.980 but they weren't people they were like people serpents they have that snake or serpent dragon

00:08:58.000 tail anyway so then there was fushi and nuwa i don't want to say adam and eve but like when

00:09:04.300 you're talking to westerners like oh i get it right you're gonna say like this there's the

00:09:08.120 residual two people that were leftovers a brother and sister even and then they repopulated the

00:09:14.060 earth. They recreated humans. And then they also need, because we were made out of clay, you know,

00:09:19.180 us. And so we were like, oh, we're dumb. And so they need to give us intelligence and teach us 0.99

00:09:24.740 the ways of humanity and civilization. So that's what Fuxi and Nua did, both bringing different

00:09:30.180 perspectives, different gifts, endowing humans, this new race of humans with different gifts.

00:09:35.840 And so Fuxi, the male version, gave us the eight trigrams. And the eight trigrams was a form of

00:09:43.520 science so it was kind of like the most first basic periodic table that helped you explain

00:09:48.720 the natural sciences and also the occult sciences magic and so it became the foundation of both

00:09:55.020 alchemy and natural sciences because you'll see this kind of elemental like mountain earth water

00:10:00.340 fire etc but they also are the basis of esoteric studies and then many many centuries later you

00:10:06.440 have the shang dynasty and then the shang dynasty at the time has the mandate of heaven the main

00:10:11.820 form of divination was oracle bones. And oracle bones, what they did was they would take a tortoise 0.82

00:10:17.000 shell or any bone from an animal like an ox, and they put it over fire. And when you put it over

00:10:22.220 fire, it cracks. And the ones that cracks, a shaman priest or priestess is able to read that. 0.66

00:10:27.820 And that was the form of divination. And even that used the eight trigrams. And then at one point,

00:10:34.160 the last king or the last emperor of the Shang dynasty was considered to be very corrupt. You

00:10:40.260 know, he offended Niwa. So you know how in the beginning there was a fushi and Niwa is the 0.83

00:10:44.880 female counterpart. She had a temple and then the king went into her temple and desecrated the temple 0.83

00:10:50.820 with a very lewd poem and that pissed her off. So she's like, okay, I'm going to cause you to

00:10:56.920 lose the mandate of heaven because she's not the king of heaven, right? So she's like, I'm going to

00:11:02.160 manipulate the situation and make it so you lose the mandate of heaven. So the king of heaven says

00:11:07.560 you are no longer fit to rule. So how does she do this? She decides to task a fox spirit, a demon

00:11:14.140 fox spirit, to go and turn into this beautiful concubine and to corrupt the king's soul to such

00:11:21.460 an extent that the king of heaven has no choice but to give the mandate of heaven's will to

00:11:27.360 another king, which was King Zhou. Anyway, King Zhou was imprisoned by King Shang. There's a lot

00:11:33.200 of the legends, one of the legends is that a fox spirit knew that there was something up with this

00:11:37.900 King Wen. So she told the last King of Shang to imprison him. While he's in prison, he takes Fuxi's

00:11:44.520 eight trigrams, stacks them together. So now you have two trigrams stacked together. They form the

00:11:50.260 64 hexagrams. He uses the 64 hexagrams as a divination system to then receive the mandate

00:11:56.440 of heaven. So once he did that, he receives the mandate of heaven. And now his clan, his lineage

00:12:01.640 now has heaven's wills and you guys will be you know the next rulers so then he ultimately you 0.92

00:12:07.340 know fast forward there's a there's a big war and he overthrew he overthrows the yishang dynasty and

00:12:13.280 becomes the king that's where the ichin came from and that's where the ichin came from so what does

00:12:18.740 it mean to you like just you're feeling based on this research or based on your own practices these

00:12:25.200 days, that these were given as a tool or devised as a tool, tell me which is right, to communicate

00:12:34.000 with the spirits of heaven.

00:12:35.040 And what does it mean that each line, broken or unbroken, is feminine or masculine, yin

00:12:43.120 or yang?

00:12:43.740 What does that tell us about beliefs about the messages in the universe or the living

00:12:49.080 text of the universe?

00:12:50.020 How does this really help us?

00:12:51.820 What does it do?

00:12:53.480 There's a lot to unpack there.

00:12:54.820 So I think for one, I would say it's received. We always talk about it as being received because, you know, you have heaven. We are here on earth. So we receive the divination. So King Wen received the 64 hexagrams. Fushi received the eight trigrams from heaven or whatnot. And then from there, the lines.

00:13:15.440 So I think when we say one is masculine, one is feminine, there are a lot of things that

00:13:20.780 we can say about that.

00:13:21.500 One, some people do have that perspective.

00:13:23.340 And I think it's more how we observe people, right?

00:13:26.140 So when we observe people, people are socialized in a particular way. 0.79

00:13:30.100 And then we say, oh, this is feminine.

00:13:31.600 People are socialized a particular way.

00:13:33.160 We say that is masculine.

00:13:34.780 And so it's more of how we observe human behavior and then make these categorizations and then

00:13:40.720 go, oh, let's equate this and have a correspondence over to something that is more of an

00:13:45.040 objective, fundamental science.

00:13:47.280 So whether or not that fundamental objective science is the yin line is feminine and the

00:13:53.120 yang line is masculine, that's up for debate.

00:13:55.560 Either way, though, we do have a pretty unanimous agreement that when we're talking about humans,

00:14:00.720 humans are not yin or yang.

00:14:02.820 We are a combination of yin and yang.

00:14:04.980 And that you might veer more toward yin dominance, or you might veer more toward yang dominance,

00:14:10.100 or you might be harmonized between the two, exactly like these 64 hexagrams. You have very

00:14:15.380 different proportions of yin and yang lines. Now, yin and yang are the fundamental zeros and ones,

00:14:21.440 the basic building blocks of all of this universe. So the best way to explain it as a metaphor is

00:14:27.660 if you think about the virtual world, virtual reality. Ultimately, what we see, this is all

00:14:32.180 very pictorial, right? It looks like this world, this universe, we're even talking to each other,

00:14:36.380 I can see your beautiful face.

00:14:38.480 But then ultimately what is happening is all zeros and ones.

00:14:42.940 It's all code. 0.93

00:14:43.880 And so that is what the I Ching is about.

00:14:45.640 It's about binary code that forms images, shang, pictures, and it then forms building

00:14:50.580 blocks and it creates this chemistry that becomes the universe.

00:14:53.020 Why I love it so much is because to me, it connects me to the legacy of my ancestral

00:14:57.980 lineage, my heritage. 0.96

00:14:59.660 And so to me, that's a very superficial reason for loving the I Ching, but it is what it 0.67

00:15:03.880 is. 0.98

00:15:04.160 And so that connects me to my roots.

00:15:07.100 And so that's why I really love it.

00:15:08.480 And then also I'd find that it's so timeless, no matter which century or which civilization, 0.91

00:15:13.740 which religion, which culture it finds itself in, whoever is looking at the I Ching, they 0.91

00:15:18.120 see themselves, they see their own perspectives. 0.92

00:15:20.320 And not only that, it meets you where you are, and then it will take you to higher ground.

00:15:25.900 It takes you to where you want to go.

00:15:27.880 So that's something really incredible about just the device or tool itself.

00:15:32.680 Has your experience or the ways that you use it changed in the last 10 years?

00:15:38.440 Yeah, I think it changes with our own philosophy on the occult, our occult philosophy, and just how we interact with the spirit world.

00:15:47.460 I think when you're young, you have this perspective of, if I can, I will, or I'm going to experiment.

00:15:54.560 I want to see if I can do it, right?

00:15:56.540 And so you're very adventurous without a lot of wisdom, and you want to try and experiment

00:16:02.620 with any form of spirit contact, any form of occult practice. 1.00

00:16:06.620 And so I had that same adventurous, you know, hasty, rash philosophy with the I Ching as 1.00

00:16:13.680 well. 1.00

00:16:14.080 How far can I take this?

00:16:16.020 How far can I go with the device?

00:16:18.500 And then, I mean, at some point, I think you just hit this age, right?

00:16:22.900 Like this crone age, if you will, where you just scale back.

00:16:25.880 And it's more about self-reflection and harmony and living in harmony with the world around you.

00:16:32.020 You just want peace in all aspects, all definitions of peace.

00:16:36.960 And so just because you can doesn't mean you will or do.

00:16:40.400 And you really learn to lean into that philosophy.

00:16:43.480 So for me, now the I Ching is more of a philosophical self-reflection tool.

00:16:48.000 I like to read it as scripture before it was more about seeing what it can do.

00:16:52.280 there was definitely a period in my like very anxious early working in like bad tech startup

00:16:59.980 days where like wanting to get out of that world I think I consulted it just like online not really

00:17:05.820 knowing what I was doing like 12 times a day when I was trying to like get the courage to quit my

00:17:10.720 job or to change my life and obviously consulting it that many times is not useful like this was

00:17:16.580 like an anxious coping strategy but I also felt really comforted by the different results I would

00:17:22.200 get because I always felt like I understood things are going to keep changing and I can watch how

00:17:27.900 things change in the people around me and the dynamics around me. And I'll find a way through.

00:17:32.680 That's always been something I felt was there in those messages. Can you talk about, you mentioned

00:17:38.140 it's brought you closer to your ancestors and you do offer a way in the book, probably not for people

00:17:44.880 who are not from somewhere in Asia, but a way of connecting with your ancestors using the I Ching.

00:17:50.420 Can you talk more about that?

00:17:52.100 I interact a lot with Asian Americans who don't speak the language anymore, and they

00:17:58.220 aren't always as attached to after one or two generations in terms of their ancestry.

00:18:03.620 They don't really have that connection anymore.

00:18:05.900 And then if you talk about mainland China, I think it was the 50s, 60s and 70s where

00:18:11.980 you were required during the Cultural Revolution to burn all of your family trees, all your

00:18:16.720 family books.

00:18:17.980 And so, for example, because my parents are from Taiwan and they escaped that, we have books. 0.51

00:18:23.300 It was a cultural practice to keep a family tree. 0.90

00:18:26.880 And so I know my family line back 27 generations.

00:18:30.780 I know how they traveled and migrated from northern China to the south and how they migrated over to Taiwan.

00:18:36.140 My husband is mainland Chinese, and he was brought up during the Cultural Revolution.

00:18:39.440 He was in Tiananmen Square when Tiananmen Square happened, but he was a kid and he has a really interesting perspective.

00:18:47.360 of what happened during Tiananmen Square

00:18:49.840 from the perspective of being living right there.

00:18:53.700 But like, so because his family was required

00:18:55.560 to burn their books,

00:18:57.220 beyond his grandfather,

00:18:58.720 he doesn't know his family at all.

00:19:00.600 Yeah.

00:19:01.260 And so when you have people like that,

00:19:03.380 they want to connect to their ancestry.

00:19:05.420 How? 1.00

00:19:06.080 And I found that the I Ching as a divination tool 1.00

00:19:09.380 and a communication tool is a fantastic way 0.98

00:19:11.560 of being able to connect to that ancestry

00:19:13.860 and establish that connection and that pillar again.

00:19:17.360 I do. I was thinking when I was reading your book, there's something so Canadian culture,

00:19:25.100 there's something about it that wants to forget in a way, I think, because we're on stolen land

00:19:30.820 or, you know, and we have this sort of generational trauma. But yeah, similar to your

00:19:35.220 husband, I guess, although without the violence, the cultural revolution, we just past grandparents

00:19:40.040 or great grandparents names kind of are just gone. There's no, there's no keeping them. So

00:19:44.780 finding practices for reconnecting with that, it's really, I think, a way to find some,

00:19:51.020 I don't know, liberation or some calm or some perspective, which I think we could all use more

00:19:57.100 of these days. Yeah, absolutely. And then even one of the proverbs in the Tao Te Ching, which is

00:20:03.500 another one of the mystery Tao Te Ching, it says, the more you want to know about the future,

00:20:09.040 the more you need to know about the past. So it's proportionate increments. If I want to know

00:20:13.960 X amount into the future, then I need to be knowledgeable first before I even venture that

00:20:19.360 way to know X amount into the past. And so it's fascinating how if you think about it that way,

00:20:24.700 then as practitioners, if you believe that, then it's a requirement to know your past,

00:20:31.940 to know your legacy, not just the history of your family, but the history of your people,

00:20:35.960 the history of this planet, of the land that we're occupying. So this is a really fascinating

00:20:40.540 axiom if you think about it from a practitioner perspective yeah i like an empowering perspective

00:20:48.720 that gives me homework i think that's always right always good speaking about sort of knowing our

00:20:56.700 past there's one figure in your book that i've started to read more about can you talk to me

00:21:04.040 more about the Queen Mother of the West or the Great Mother of the West and how this goddess

00:21:10.660 from the numinous void connects to how we think about the I Ching.

00:21:16.860 Yi Wang Mu, the Queen Mother of the West. So one of the most fascinating aspects of her is

00:21:22.860 she doesn't have one manifestation or like just what, like she evolved. And that's one of the

00:21:28.960 things that I really love about Eastern perspectives of the divine and deity. There's

00:21:33.240 an evolution. You have a lot of who we now venerate as deities or divine figures, but they were once

00:21:39.340 human, they were once mortal. Or there's evolution from Bodhisattva to Buddha. There's always this

00:21:43.460 idea of like, it's not like you are a goddess and you were always a goddess infinitely and

00:21:48.180 timelessly. There's an evolution and a growth process in the divine as well. So there is the

00:21:54.900 mythology that she's part of the primordial chaos that came before time and space. So before the

00:22:00.280 king of the heavenly father the heavenly in heaven and earth before heaven and earth were even

00:22:05.200 created before yin and yang there was this queen mother primordial goddess and when we picture her

00:22:12.600 in that dark goddess manifestation they usually picture her feral like a wild woman hair like 0.98

00:22:19.080 crazy out and all that she's either wearing animal skins and bird feathers or she's part animal or 0.98

00:22:24.020 she has like sharp tiger teeth we literally picture her as a wild animal like literally

00:22:29.820 You know what I mean? 1.00

00:22:30.620 Yes. 0.93

00:22:31.360 Once there was heaven and earth and there was, you know, civilization form, she self-cultivated

00:22:36.800 and became a celestial goddess on Quinlan Mountain, like an immortal goddess. 1.00

00:22:41.260 And then when she became an empress figure, she's all like in beautiful dresses with a 0.99

00:22:46.240 crown and like super elegant and beautiful.

00:22:48.920 And it's just like, okay, whatever.

00:22:50.140 But like, you know.

00:22:51.280 Sure, we'll do that too.

00:22:53.580 That part aside, you know, but it's really interesting to see the evolution of how we

00:22:58.040 picture her, you know.

00:22:59.400 And so as that goddess figure in heaven, she is often in both the patron goddess of shamanesses and shamans.

00:23:07.520 And so because she has a specific realm in her kingdom on Mount Quinglin just for shamans and shamanesses.

00:23:15.000 And so because of that, there's just that close connection to her as a guiding divine figure. 0.86

00:23:20.160 And then because everything's connected, who are the people most likely to use the I Ching as a divination tool or as an occult device?

00:23:29.120 Well, these shamans and shamanesses. So that's where that connection comes from. But it's also a very controversial perspective, because if you talk to those who are more in the I Ching scholarship feel, oh, this is scholarship, this is philosophy, especially a more masculinized view of the I Ching, this would be considered very controversial. 0.92

00:23:46.700 Was that part of your intention or is that part of your interest? It does seem like when I've tried to read things about the I Ching in the past, I don't have the context to properly know, but I had this vibe that I was wading through patriarchy trying to get to something.

00:24:04.260 And it was really hard to understand where I felt like in your book, there's always an attention paid to a female leader or to a female priestess. 0.62

00:24:14.440 So there's always like you're always bringing those people in, in this sort of playing field way where, I don't know, it feels like calmly radical.

00:24:23.860 It's not something I brought in.

00:24:25.780 I think it exists. 0.91

00:24:27.040 It pre-exists in the I Ching.

00:24:29.980 Even when you think about the history of King Wen, King Wen himself talked about how important the wise counsel of his mother and his wife were. 0.73

00:24:41.020 And he always, like, he's very quick to attribute his wise counsel to his mom and his wife.

00:24:46.480 And he keeps saying, I couldn't do it without my mom and my wife. 0.95

00:24:49.680 And then the counter, the negative point, if you think about who brought down the Shang dynasty, it was a woman. 0.57

00:24:55.080 So the negative aspect of female empowerment and female influence is also there in the stories as well. You have all these stories of well-known shaman priestesses who advised the kings, and they were generals as well. They were generals that led armies. And so I think it was always part of our culture. 0.97

00:25:13.940 Confucianism did sort of underscore patriarchy. 0.86

00:25:17.680 And then when you have these books migrate westward through the Christian lens, it gets

00:25:22.960 even more patriarchal.

00:25:24.400 A lot of the feminine aspects and even the stories of female leaders, the stories of

00:25:29.860 female practitioners, female priestesses that led entire Taoist lineages that became some

00:25:34.680 of the most well-known lineages in Chinese history, that gets erased when it goes westward.

00:25:40.960 Can you talk more about these Taoist lineages with women at their center point?

00:25:46.360 I'm interested in Chen Jinggu, and so I've been reading about her and the cult around her.

00:25:51.400 Can you tell me what you know?

00:25:52.880 She's part of a triple goddess.

00:25:54.620 I guess we use the word cult, but not cult as in the negative, but cult as in a group of people who have a religious order and perspective.

00:26:02.420 There's three who were Taoist priestesses at some point, so humans, and then they evolved and became immortal goddesses.

00:26:09.400 and then the three of them together.

00:26:11.480 It's a lot like this Holy Trinity concept

00:26:13.880 where the three are venerated as one,

00:26:16.860 but they also represent different facets of magic.

00:26:20.960 So the one you're talking about, Lin Sui Furen,

00:26:23.700 she is a goddess or Taoist priestess shamanist figure

00:26:27.920 that people will often venerate or invoke.

00:26:31.360 It's a form of journeying to the underworld,

00:26:34.120 descending into the underworld

00:26:35.380 to be able to connect to their own homeland in the underworld.

00:26:40.220 I love the idea of a homeland in the underworld.

00:26:43.020 Yeah, isn't that cool?

00:26:44.000 Do you feel like you have visited that before in your own workings?

00:26:47.480 Do you have a personal relationship to that idea?

00:26:50.000 Yeah, I do.

00:26:50.880 I use a different process.

00:26:52.320 So what my mom does, what we do is dream work.

00:26:54.900 You do certain recitations and meditations before you go to sleep.

00:26:59.620 And then while you're sleeping, well, in the sleeping world, that's when you visit.

00:27:02.580 And then when you wake up, you kind of remember where you were.

00:27:05.900 So it's like a cross between actual dreaming or lucid dreaming.

00:27:09.980 But that is sort of more of the methodology.

00:27:11.720 If you had to put a label to it, that would be the methodology for descent into the underworld.

00:27:16.720 So there's different ways of descent, but that was the one that I grew up with.

00:27:21.260 What do you think about the idea of cultural appropriation?

00:27:24.660 You share so much wisdom from across so many different cultures in your work in a really generous way.

00:27:34.000 What feels appropriate for white people, settler descendants to engage with, you know, sacred traditional practices? 0.62

00:27:43.340 I think I'm still working through that.

00:27:44.960 I have a lot of conflicting opinions.

00:27:46.920 I think by my nature, and I think this is true for the nature of a lot of Native practitioners, we want to share.

00:27:53.700 And I think when somebody not from your, you know, not from your, your people, right, when they're genuinely interested in your native practices, that makes us happy.

00:28:04.300 Like, I think it genuinely lights you up.

00:28:06.300 Like, wait, you think this is cool?

00:28:08.660 Like, what?

00:28:09.500 You know, like, it makes you super happy and you just want to, like, throw everything at them and share everything. 0.83

00:28:14.480 and then at some point you realize you fucked up because somebody who shouldn't have gotten a hold

00:28:19.600 of it gets it and takes it in like the wrong direction and as it is with human nature it's 0.99

00:28:25.100 the one percent the one percent of rotten apples that ruins it for the 99 so 99 of the non-natives 0.88

00:28:33.120 who practice it it's welcomed it's loved it actually makes us feel good i feel like it

00:28:37.480 amplifies our practice and i also think there is a humility that native practitioners can adopt

00:28:44.060 in how we learn from non-natives practicing our native practices because they see something that

00:28:51.700 we don't necessarily see. You know, even when you think about, so when you read how, for example, 1.00

00:28:57.280 like if you ever are interested in reading about how Asians observe Western culture and comment

00:29:03.100 on Western culture is the most fascinating thing. Like you weirdly learn things about your own 0.99

00:29:08.620 society that you might not have thought of because you're so entrenched in it, right? So same,

00:29:14.060 when I read what Westerners have to say about Eastern practice, I'm like, oh, oh, really? Like,

00:29:19.300 I never thought of it that way, but that's kind of a really cool way. And so if you have the

00:29:23.740 humility to accept that lesson, that teaching, you learn a lot about your own practices and

00:29:29.180 your own heritage. But I think in terms of cultural appropriation, like it's always that

00:29:33.860 one person that ruins it. And then even in terms of like how I Ching came West, right? Like I'm 0.85

00:29:41.240 very grateful that we had the forefathers, the forefathers who brought it westward and really

00:29:49.600 were able to put it in the hands of Western occultists. And we can see how it got synchronized

00:29:54.300 into Western occultism and Western philosophy. And it's a beautiful thing. But how it got there,

00:29:59.620 it required the stripping away of a lot of the cultural native legacies of what the I Ching

00:30:05.540 actually is and a bit of a misinterpretation of it. And then so once you get into the West,

00:30:10.720 It became so embedded with one single perspective, the Wilhelm and the Legge perspective. 0.90

00:30:16.580 This is the one and only way to interpret the I Ching, that when an Asian person who 0.95

00:30:22.180 is studying it through the native lens comes West and says, well, no, that's not the whole 0.71

00:30:28.740 picture.

00:30:29.420 I don't even understand that picture, to be completely honest.

00:30:32.060 You are the one that's wrong, right?

00:30:33.720 Because you don't have a degree in East Asian studies from Harvard.

00:30:37.760 And because of that, you're the one who's wrong.

00:30:40.020 whereas I studied Wilhelm's book and I have five degrees from an Ivy League, so I know more than

00:30:44.180 you do. So then is that cultural appropriation? I don't know the answer, but it does create a

00:30:50.700 conflict, like a tension that I don't know quite how to reconcile. Yeah, me neither, but that's

00:30:56.380 such an interesting perspective on it. There's so much I want to learn from you, which is really fun

00:31:01.940 and exciting perspective, always to get to sit down with someone who I'm just like awed by the

00:31:08.060 research I guess but also I want to pull back and be like how do you do this like physically how do

00:31:14.440 you do it because you also are as far as I understand still like full-time very intense

00:31:21.420 lawyer job you're lawyering some lawyer you're lawyering like all the time I'm in health care 0.94

00:31:29.860 law I'm okay so relaxing I was doing health care law during COVID shit yeah that that was a that 0.86

00:31:37.420 something do those worlds interact at all like to do your occult studies and your writing and 0.58

00:31:43.580 research there and health care law I mean they they interact in you in the body of you as a

00:31:50.300 person but do you do you think of do you draw on one world or the other myself yes for sure but in

00:31:56.260 terms of the physical right the the communities like this your social circles I keep it as

00:32:02.400 separate as possible. And I don't talk about one in the other, but I think as a person, we all do

00:32:08.880 whatever your educational background is, your family background, your culture, everything,

00:32:12.140 they all kind of like mix together and every single decision you make and all kinds of mix

00:32:17.100 together and influences even how you think about or process things. Do you ever turn to the

00:32:22.960 I Ching when you're trying to figure out what a client needs to do next? No, I don't think I had 0.99

00:32:29.360 too. It's not that clients aren't, they're of course important, but it's more like I think I

00:32:35.900 can rely on legal analysis to solve the problem. I think when we lean into the I Ching, it's 1.00

00:32:44.500 because I don't have access to solving the problem in the mortal physical world. And so if I have 1.00

00:32:52.260 the tools in the mundane world to solve the problem, I don't necessarily see the need to

00:32:57.560 into the other. But like little funny, you know how when you review a contract, the process of

00:33:03.140 reviewing a contract is to kind of like spot the issues. So you have to spot like where the

00:33:08.300 problems are and then like redline or flag them in the comments. And so you're always kind of

00:33:13.700 insecure. Did you catch all the issues? Did you catch everything? Is there more for you to catch?

00:33:18.440 So I don't necessarily use the I Ching because the process is too long. And I take I Ching a 1.00

00:33:23.120 little bit more seriously than I made the tarot. So I will draw tarot cards to see whether or not 0.99

00:33:29.640 I'm done redlining a contract or if there's more issues to spot. It's a little like silly things

00:33:35.620 like that I'll use divination for, but yeah, I do try to keep them fairly separate. Yeah, that's

00:33:40.940 fair and super interesting. Has your thought about like fortune telling or divination changed?

00:33:48.240 I know you talk about it sort of in one way in the tarot book, and then it seems maybe

00:33:53.500 like you think about it differently now.

00:33:55.940 I don't think my perspective within me as a central pillar has ever changed.

00:34:02.200 I think it's more, I understand that people use language differently.

00:34:07.400 And so when people, and then also there were a lot of reasons that I talked about fortune

00:34:12.700 telling the way I did in the tarot book.

00:34:14.240 Some of it came from a legal perspective because so many jurisdictions still have anti-fortune

00:34:19.580 telling laws.

00:34:20.820 And so if you take tarot out of that category of fortune telling and put a new patent to

00:34:28.620 it and you sort of reshape how it is presented, you can legalize it in places where there

00:34:36.020 are anti-fortune telling laws.

00:34:37.860 So you're saying, I'm using tarot in a way that's not fortune telling.

00:34:40.940 Therefore, it is not illegal for me to practice.

00:34:43.720 You know, in addition to it being for entertainment purposes, only by role. Right. Yeah. And so I mean, that was kind of the perspective I was coming from. And that's actually what the law does all of the time. What lawyers do is if you really look at there's so many examples where something because of the way it's presented and spoken about, it's illegal. You don't change it at all.

00:35:04.680 The practice is 100% the same, but you bring a lawyer into the picture and they reshape how you talk about it.

00:35:12.520 They repackage and put a new paint job on it and present it as something else.

00:35:16.940 Suddenly, what was illegal, the same exact action is now legal because a lawyer repackaged what it is.

00:35:24.220 And it's a little bit of where I was coming from when I was talking about the tarot and holistic tarot.

00:35:29.080 And my mom is very much a fortune teller.

00:35:31.300 She's very much, she calls what I do fortune telling and I can't get over this.

00:35:35.060 I keep telling her what I do is not fortune telling.

00:35:37.120 She's like, well, it looks like fortune telling, right?

00:35:39.860 It's just that we have very different vocabulary.

00:35:42.940 We use vocabulary. 0.65

00:35:43.940 What is a witch? 0.99

00:35:44.860 Like, that's a good question.

00:35:45.940 What's a shaman?

00:35:46.620 What's a shaman?

00:35:47.260 What's a priest?

00:35:48.080 Who can call themselves a priestess?

00:35:50.100 And so I think for me, it's just how I was using language differs from how a lot of other

00:35:54.260 people were using language.

00:35:56.180 12 years ago, I was probably a little bit more stubborn and like, this is my way.

00:36:01.300 And my way is right.

00:36:02.340 And you're wrong.

00:36:03.060 And I think, you know, aging kind of like eases you up a little bit.

00:36:08.200 Right. 1.00

00:36:09.260 So like a decade later, I'm just like, oh, fuck it. 1.00

00:36:12.180 Like, I'm fine. 1.00

00:36:13.420 I'm a fortune teller.

00:36:14.800 Whatever you want to call me, that's like on you.

00:36:17.220 I am fine with it.

00:36:18.440 So I think it's more about just like relaxing around how other people perceive you.

00:36:23.460 I feel like that about the word witch too, for sure.

00:36:27.320 Can you?

00:36:28.280 Yes.

00:36:29.240 Okay.

00:36:29.560 can you talk to us about the word witch priestess shaman you brought this up like how does this

00:36:38.780 how does this work across history but about when no i won't do that to you but i love how much you

00:36:45.800 know and i want you to just think out loud about it there's been so many different perspectives

00:36:51.200 you know so i think the first perspective i guess is i don't know how witch in english

00:36:57.560 is translated into Chinese, for example, even in Korean, from a lot of my Korean friends have

00:37:04.800 like, I don't know what witches in Korean either. And so you see a lot of that, right? Even in

00:37:09.280 Tagalog and in the Philippines, you know, where in Southeast Asia, there are a lot of practices

00:37:13.660 that really, really look like, you know, sort of black and white textbook witchcraft. But then in

00:37:19.440 the native languages, it's maybe they call it shamanism. And there's a lot of ways that we

00:37:23.760 talk about it that's different. And even like before you even do, you know, cross-cultural

00:37:28.720 translations, do people in the English language have an agreement on what the word witch means

00:37:34.440 or what the word shaman means? Can shaman only be used in specific cultural contexts and specific

00:37:40.620 traditions? Or is shaman a loan word where you can actually use it to describe a very generic

00:37:46.200 practice? Like we haven't even necessarily reached a unanimous agreement and now you're

00:37:51.300 transporting it out and trying to find an equivalent translation in different language,

00:37:55.920 it's just not going to happen. And so I think that's the first and foremost. But what we do

00:38:00.460 have, we have wushu. Wushu is either witchcraft or it's shamanism. And it just kind of depends 0.92

00:38:07.060 on who you talk to, but it's probably a little bit of both. And then like people who are

00:38:10.900 witches, I think they're like, oh, I get it. Because a lot of the practices witches do,

00:38:16.080 no matter what the culture is, is kind of shamanistic. And so the fact that we don't have

00:38:21.860 like these separate words for it kind of makes sense, where it's this one word that encompasses

00:38:26.460 both the concept of shamanism and the concept of journeying and spirit context and the concept of

00:38:31.600 witchcraft, which is more like, you know, the down and dirty spell crafting and mixing ingredients

00:38:36.260 and, you know, hocus pocus, abracadabra, that kind of thing. Now I sound like I know nothing

00:38:41.160 about witchcraft hocus focus forever no you're good keep going right and then so and then even

00:38:47.420 in terms of the idea of like like black magic white magic which i don't like or dark or light

00:38:52.040 malistic or baneful baneful witchcraft or what's that benevolent i don't know what the opposite

00:38:58.460 or good white whatever so like even those concepts it depends on who you ask you know i think you

00:39:04.320 will talk to asian practitioners who really believe it if you look at mongolian shamanism

00:39:10.320 I think one is called golden, yellow, and then the other one is called black.

00:39:14.520 And that's sort of the terminology they use based on the intention that is put behind

00:39:19.000 the craft.

00:39:20.220 And then in Asian culture, like my mom's generation believes that if you do what we 0.91

00:39:25.660 do, but you do it only for good, then you're a xian gu, and there's a word for that. 0.97

00:39:30.460 And then if you're doing what we do, but you're willing to do curses and hexes and 0.92

00:39:35.240 baneful magic and forms of poison magic, then you are 无婆 or 女无, there's different

00:39:41.180 words for it. And 无婆, that's another word. So 无婆 is basically witch, or that's how it

00:39:47.380 gets translated. It's also very feminine. So it takes the word 无, shaman, which is gender

00:39:52.940 neutral, adds the word 婆, which basically means crone, like old lady, mixes it together and has

00:40:00.200 this word. And for multiple generations, wupo, like a female shaman who was a little bit older

00:40:07.060 in age, was a very negative and derogatory term for any female who practiced witchcraft or shamanism.

00:40:15.160 So you can look young, but if they want to use a derogatory term, they'll call you an wupo.

00:40:21.140 However, my generation and the younger generations now are trying to reclaim the word wupo. So you'll

00:40:27.500 see a lot of people now self-identifying as wupo, and not in a bad, insulting way, but they want to

00:40:33.260 reclaim the power of the word wupo. So it depends on which generation you're interacting with,

00:40:39.480 whether or not wupo is really derogatory, and don't you dare call me that, or I am self-identifying

00:40:45.320 proudly as wupo, really is generational at this point. And when you look at the history in China

00:40:52.320 specifically, do you see times when what was illegal in terms of those practices was gendered?

00:41:01.300 Yes, but they call it different things. You know, so it's not like the same thing. Like if I'm,

00:41:06.500 if I'm, you know, a scholar, like a high class, you know, noble scholar born into aristocracy

00:41:12.980 doing witchcraft or doing something, whatever this one thing is, that's legal. And then the

00:41:18.960 peasant housewife in the village doing the same exact thing is illegal. It's because of their 1.00

00:41:24.660 gender. It's more, they call it different things. So the very fact that I'm a woman in a village,

00:41:31.860 what I'm doing, the very fact I'm doing it by its innate definition is something that is illegal.

00:41:39.280 Does that any sense? And then if I'm a male scholar who has passed the imperial exams and

00:41:45.260 I'm doing something, it's alchemy, which is beautiful and wonderful. And it makes me a smart

00:41:50.000 person. So even though we would say it's the same thing, they would call it two completely separate

00:41:57.420 fa, shud, two completely different practices. And then say this practice, because of the fundamental

00:42:03.420 innate nature of who's practicing it, such as poison magic. For the longest time, poison magic

00:42:08.160 was only associated with particular ethnic groups, the women in particular ethnic groups. And they 0.87

00:42:13.840 were, of course, marginalized ethnic groups. And so poison magic was considered that. But then 0.95

00:42:19.360 the practice itself is using herbs with incantations to do things that could potentially

00:42:25.520 poison or harm others. And so obviously there was a similar practice among the illiterati and the

00:42:31.660 elite, but that was not referred to as gu. It was not referred to as poison magic. It was just

00:42:36.320 alchemy. Right. Exactly what I was wondering. Yes. Thank you so much. That's so interesting.

00:42:42.220 okay folks last last chance for questions i'm super excited to meet you i shared in our in our

00:42:50.960 online circle i did a a new moon weaving that was inspired by work of sarah goddess dinner to to do

00:43:01.240 a new moon weaving on the new moon and utilizing a tarot deck by elise orsa that was specifically

00:43:07.980 for spellcrafting. But then I consulted your Holistic Tarot for the meaning that I needed to

00:43:14.220 take and infuse into the weaving. And I can't thank you enough because it came together. It

00:43:18.800 was wonderful. It's so awesome to get to tell you that. Oh, that's so cool. Thank you. Thank you.

00:43:25.040 I really love Holistic Tarot. It's still one of those books that I'm like, you know, it was a

00:43:29.620 really, it was good for what its purpose was. I've been talking to North Atlanta like, you know,

00:43:34.400 it does need a bit of an update you know like it was written in 2012 and it shows you know and so

00:43:41.180 like I do hope for the opportunity to be able to put out a new edition that does kind of update it

00:43:47.120 for the 2020s. What kinds of things do you think you would add? I mean I think I'd have combed

00:43:52.800 through it from beginning to end again but I think gender for example is a big one. I think how we

00:43:59.000 talked about gender in 2012 is very different from our understanding now. I think it's not

00:44:04.620 that we've changed that much in terms of our fundamental beliefs. I think it's more just like

00:44:11.240 being able to use those terminology in ways that's more inclusive. I think that part we

00:44:17.320 weren't as sensitive to, you know, just 20 years ago. And now we're being, oh, you know what,

00:44:22.480 that's, we see it already in those pre-existing terminology. We just didn't open ourselves up

00:44:28.260 to understand. I want to be able to update that. Yeah, I know what you mean. It's I can't even look

00:44:34.480 at our I mean, I like to look at our books, but I I would endlessly rewrite them given the

00:44:40.300 opportunity, you know, agreed 100 percent for sure. Yeah, there's always more. There's always

00:44:45.920 better we can be doing. This is maybe one of my second to last question. I don't want to keep you

00:44:51.200 any longer, but I do want to just keep asking you 7000 questions while I have you. What do you think

00:44:56.460 about tarot the I Ching witchcraft some of our occulted practices or or you know spiritual

00:45:05.440 learning however that maybe calls to the listener when we have a lot of people in our community

00:45:11.720 in our circles who are like most of us like heartbroken by the world right just like sort

00:45:19.420 of devastated by widening inequality, climate catastrophe. Can we use these tools towards

00:45:27.120 liberation? And if so, how? I think the hardest part is it begins with ourselves. And I think

00:45:37.180 most of us, it's so difficult to see our own ignorance because it's kind of like a, it's

00:45:43.820 circular. So for example, one of the things that I noticed from the terror community, this is a

00:45:49.020 little bit while back. But what I did was I went to Facebook and I typed in the word Chinese into

00:45:54.920 the Facebook search bar and then only searched among my friends. So what were my own friends

00:46:01.820 on Facebook saying when they use the word Chinese? And then post after post after post that came up

00:46:09.780 was, oh, like all Chinese, all Chinese people, they counterfeit, you know, they counterfeit 0.99

00:46:15.840 decks, you know, the CCP, the Communist Party. I'm like, you don't really know that much about 1.00

00:46:20.440 the Communist Party. How are you talking about the CCP? It was overwhelmingly negative. And then

00:46:26.460 having, for example, my father-in-law, who doesn't speak any English, getting accosted at Costco and 1.00

00:46:33.560 then having people say to him, oh, you fucking Chinese. And you're always in the way because 0.99

00:46:36.880 he bumped into somebody. And then, of course, sort of the evolution of anti-Asian hate and

00:46:42.500 like not realizing how all of it is connected. It's because of those little things that we say

00:46:47.840 on the internet that we think, well, my little word didn't, like, how does that cause anti-Asian

00:46:53.320 hate? Of course it doesn't, right? Like, I don't hate Asians. I love Asian people. We excuse and

00:46:57.840 absolve ourselves of our language. And we don't realize that we've contributed a seed that builds

00:47:03.760 and builds and builds. And so if I do something like search the word Chinese and pull up just

00:47:08.580 what my friends are saying, not even like what the wider community on the internet is saying,

00:47:13.580 which is even going to be negativity amplified, right? Just among my friends, to see that

00:47:18.680 negativity, like it does dehumanize a specific group of people enough that gives us the authority

00:47:28.020 or justification to then exact violence upon them. And I'm only speaking from the Chinese perspective 0.88

00:47:34.060 because of who I am. But today, right now, we're seeing that with a lot of other ethnic communities.

00:47:39.780 And you're seeing how little, well, oh, what I said is not anti-Semitic. What I said is not

00:47:45.020 anti-Muslim. But then it contributes in an indirect way. There is that butterfly effect 0.98

00:47:51.340 that then as a collective, once all of that is built up on the individual level,

00:47:56.700 it allows the mob mentality to justify violence. And we don't realize how we as individuals

00:48:02.500 contribute. And if it can happen among people who call themselves the spiritualists, it's definitely

00:48:07.360 happening among people who are not as spiritual. And so I think before we start having these

00:48:11.680 conversations about like, you know, doing magic and spell crafting and meditation, like it gets

00:48:16.780 really basic to just words are magic, words are powerful. And so if we truly believe that, just

00:48:23.440 be more mindful of your own words. And so I think that's sort of my rant for the day, because I see

00:48:27.780 a lot of practitioners talking about like well i want to do you know a meta mantra recitations and

00:48:34.280 meditate to heal the universe and and contribute or do yoga to heal the world i'm like well why

00:48:39.300 don't you start with your like your rhetoric all right off off my sofa no i love it it's so good

00:48:46.880 yeah because also i mean it's very magical also what you're talking about it's absolutely magic

00:48:54.560 it's so occult isn't it like what you're seeing happening in geopolitics I'm like if this is an

00:48:59.500 occult practice happening like that I don't know why people don't see it right like these words

00:49:04.260 taking on power and this gathering momentum of dehumanizing people kids like using words to do

00:49:13.120 that is is some really heavy illusory stuff that we have to unpack before I agree before we can do

00:49:18.580 yoga circles for peace or whatever though that sounds fun yeah exactly yeah yeah yeah man how

00:49:25.800 do we unpack these layers of abstraction that we grow up in you know like the the work of of doing

00:49:31.620 that is real real work we have to challenge ourselves to do and maybe it goes back to

00:49:36.260 your point from earlier that if we want to see into the future we have to spend that time

00:49:43.920 understanding the past what whose land are we on whose land does our grandmother grow up on

00:49:50.000 what is that history because otherwise we're sort of lost floundering in this

00:49:54.880 endless present I think yeah absolutely oh man it's so cool to get to meet you I love your work

00:50:01.920 so much I appreciate you as a both as a as a scholar and a writer and as a figure online that

00:50:09.380 I can rely on to bring a real open-minded and fair-mindedness and yeah I really it's like if

00:50:17.820 someone if there's an issue going on and you have decided to speak on it there will be 10,000

00:50:22.660 fucking words like she's not it's like so we're not gonna just sort of like fly off the handle 0.94

00:50:30.240 at people that's gonna be a real thoughtful breakdown and I I'm I'm really here for that 0.99

00:50:35.060 i really really appreciate that in in the online space i did life also doesn't get you in trouble 0.97

00:50:40.580 every once in a while yeah fuck it i mean i hope that you are always safe and that your father-in-law 0.99

00:50:49.580 feels safe and loved and yeah but but good for you for fucking stirring the pot sometimes 0.99

00:50:57.360 you want to end on that fun tanaman square story yes if you have time i want to end on it i have 0.99

00:51:04.740 I have stood there and I want to know the story from your husband as a little kid.

00:51:11.420 He was nine or 10, okay, when it happened.

00:51:15.040 And his grandfather worked with Deng Xiaoping and knew Chairman Mao.

00:51:20.600 They have actual photos in their place.

00:51:23.160 So in Beijing, we call their circles, right?

00:51:26.000 They're the second circle, third circle, fourth circle.

00:51:27.980 And where you live, where you have housing kind of shows your family occupation.

00:51:31.880 So they lived among the bureaucrats and the government officials.

00:51:35.320 So it was the second, they call it the second ring.

00:51:37.620 The first ring is Tiananmen.

00:51:39.520 So there's Tiananmen Square.

00:51:40.640 And in the second, so we could walk from his place to Tiananmen Square.

00:51:45.200 That was where he grew up.

00:51:46.880 So he's nine or 10.

00:51:48.080 And all he remembers is he thought Tiananmen Square was the best thing to have ever happened.

00:51:53.000 Because for like two weeks, he didn't have to go to school.

00:51:57.440 You're a boy, you're a little kid.

00:51:59.240 So for two weeks, he didn't have to go to school.

00:52:01.980 Soldiers came and boarded up their windows and their doors.

00:52:06.020 So nobody could look outside their windows.

00:52:07.920 They couldn't leave the house.

00:52:09.180 And there was surveillance.

00:52:10.400 You couldn't go anywhere.

00:52:11.500 But he didn't care.

00:52:12.240 He's nine.

00:52:12.800 Where does he want to go?

00:52:13.420 You don't have to go to school.

00:52:14.380 So the only bummer, the only bummer to Tanden was he couldn't play outside.

00:52:18.360 He had to play inside.

00:52:19.720 However, the positive was that the soldiers would bring him toys.

00:52:23.500 So he could request any toy he wanted.

00:52:25.840 And the next day, the soldiers would bring him the toy that he requested for free.

00:52:30.540 You know what I mean?

00:52:31.000 Oh, you're right.

00:52:31.840 And so he was like, this is awesome.

00:52:33.380 And then one day, all the things lifted, and then he could go back to school.

00:52:36.900 And so that was his perspective of what happened.

00:52:39.860 And then because his mom was a scholar, she was an academic.

00:52:43.120 And at the time, they were condemning academics.

00:52:45.180 So as soon as that lifted, all he knew was his mom was like on a mission to get out of

00:52:50.760 China as soon as possible. 0.62

00:52:52.240 Like she wanted to get out of China yesterday. 0.61

00:52:54.080 And then that's how she immigrated to the United States.

00:52:56.740 So that's all he remembers.

00:52:57.900 It was a really fun time.

00:52:59.100 But immediately after, mom freaked out and mom wanted to leave China.

00:53:03.680 And then was there a moment later in life where he, like, was there one moment where

00:53:07.880 he learned, like, what was happening outside the boarded window?

00:53:11.600 After, when he came back to the United States and after coming to the U.S. and learning

00:53:15.780 English and then seeing American media on the reporting of what happened in Tiananmen,

00:53:20.920 I mean, obviously he saw none of that.

00:53:22.400 He was in his house boarded up, playing with toys and getting food to deliver to his house.

00:53:27.160 And so it was like a cognitive dissonance because you grew up for 10, 12 years of your life believing one thing happened.

00:53:34.400 And then all of a sudden you're seeing what happened outside your boarded house.

00:53:39.060 There's no way to connect the two because there's such polarities to how you imagined that event.

00:53:44.460 And even after he left the house, they really downplayed what happened to these citizens.

00:53:49.720 If you weren't 10 years old, how you were taught about what happened was there was some bad things.

00:53:54.920 But the heroic soldiers took care of the bad things.

00:53:58.100 And now it's good.

00:53:58.940 Now it's OK.

00:53:59.660 We protected you.

00:54:00.900 We saved you.

00:54:02.040 That's why you're in the house.

00:54:03.240 It's for your own protection.

00:54:05.040 Yeah.

00:54:05.580 To be able to then see the polar opposite of what really happened when he left.

00:54:09.880 It's a long time to integrate.

00:54:11.620 Yeah, it's a lot to integrate.

00:54:13.100 Yeah. 1.00

00:54:13.240 And then his mom is very anti-cultural revolution.

00:54:16.340 And then because he grew up as a child in that propaganda, he grew up like the Communist 0.61

00:54:20.920 Party is the best. 0.91

00:54:21.840 He was part of the children's version of the Red Guard.

00:54:25.600 And so then he even had that dissonance with his mom.

00:54:28.360 Like his mom had a particular life experience.

00:54:31.420 And then his grandmother was dragged through the streets with one of those boards on her.

00:54:35.640 She had to wear a dance cap and she had to wear those boards painted saying she was like a traitor.

00:54:40.000 The daughter of his grandma had to witness that and experience that.

00:54:43.560 So she has one perspective of the Cultural Revolution.

00:54:46.520 But her child, her son, was growing up in school learning about how great the Communist Party was.

00:54:52.760 So his perspective differed dramatically from his own mothers and grandmothers. And then it really took 40 to 50 years for him to reconcile the two.

00:55:02.280 It's so interesting, you know, given what we were just talking about, like trying to shake our worldviews, to shake the violent language that we use, the way we characterize other people to learn what is going on outside our own boarded windows.

00:55:15.580 And then how long it can take to really wrap our heads around what that has meant.

00:55:20.780 What were we a part of before?

00:55:22.220 What are we going to be a part of now?

00:55:24.520 Yeah, I think his version was a lot more physical.

00:55:27.280 Like there were literally boarded up windows.

00:55:29.480 But I think, to be fair, every culture, like every country has its own propaganda.

00:55:34.440 Like we are raised in our own propaganda here in the United States.

00:55:37.500 And then when you have the opportunity to leave, you know, very like strictly Western

00:55:43.740 society western culture and you interact with other cultures you know besides the western world

00:55:49.100 you really see and you are beginning to you're able to unpack a lot of that propaganda as well

00:55:54.380 you know so it's just kind of interesting how we all live with it yeah can i ask you one more

00:56:00.120 absolutely sure yeah i'm here for it especially in the context of this conversation you know

00:56:07.100 Is there a ritual or a way of turning to the tarot or the I Ching that you can think of that might help us in this work of understanding the boarded up windows of our lives, seeing the things that we haven't seen about the propagandas that we grow up in, the discourse that we're surrounded in?

00:56:28.040 Do you know what I mean?

00:56:29.160 This is, it transcends the question a little bit because it doesn't stick to tarot and the I Ching.

00:56:33.880 One thing we can really do that's actionable as practitioners, and it's treading on very like sensitive area where you do have to be mindful that it is an entering into cultural appropriation, right?

00:56:48.300 But I think it really does give us the empathy that we need to make the right decisions and be more balanced in our perspectives.

00:56:58.540 When you do something like learn about the mystical traditions of the culture that you have a lot of negative feelings around.

00:57:08.700 And so we all have like every society has pegged one civilization as the bad guys.

00:57:15.580 We all every nation has that.

00:57:17.480 So learning more about the religious traditions and the mystical practices, shamanistic and witchcraft traditions of that bad guy nation, it is much harder to continue seeing them as the bad guy because there's something universal about spirit.

00:57:36.100 And when you engage in the spiritual practices of different traditions, you see that very fundamental, at the spiritual level, commonality that we have.

00:57:47.500 And when you see how similar they are, it's a lot harder to dehumanize them.

00:57:53.880 So yeah, just practice the divinatory and spiritual practice.

00:57:57.500 Like that practice in a way that, you know, that's why I said it's very sensitive.

00:58:00.100 But I think learning more, studying, learning more and studying about those cultural practices really gives us the empathy we need.

00:58:06.100 Yeah, I think we can draw a line and say, like, studying and researching.

00:58:11.260 For sure.

00:58:12.340 Enriching, good.

00:58:13.960 Selling what you've learned.

00:58:16.120 Fair enough.

00:58:17.180 Shitty.

00:58:17.980 Like, don't do that.

00:58:20.000 I think studying and empowering yourself with the knowledge is always welcome.

00:58:24.480 Thanks again.

00:58:25.760 I think especially, like, I'm like a, you know, a white woman in the woods in Canada.

00:58:30.820 there's there's there's so many worlds of interacting with spirit and thinking about

00:58:36.400 spirit that I want to portal to and travel to and getting to talk to people like yourself who've done

00:58:41.620 so much of this research and just getting to listen is a real gift so thank you for that

00:58:46.540 thanks on behalf of our audience too where do you want to send them to find you and send you love

00:58:52.380 and throw money and support at you I don't know buy your book well eating get the book yeah

00:58:58.940 teaching but help help it get a little more exposure and visibility if you want a lot of

00:59:04.600 free downloads even in terms of the practicums and if you want to learn practical implementation

00:59:09.640 of the I Ching or tarot I have lots of free worksheets and references at benabellwen.com

00:59:14.100 so that's a place to go to I illustrated and created my own tarot deck the spirit first tarot

00:59:19.880 so if you're interested in the tarot and you want to buy indie that's that's something to look into

00:59:23.700 as well. Amazing. Thanks again. And blessed fucking be. That's right. Blessed fucking be.

00:59:31.360 You must be a witch. 1.00

00:59:35.980 The Missing Witches podcast is created by Risa Dickens and Amy Torak with insight and support

00:59:42.220 from the coven. Amy and Risa are the co-authors of Missing Witches, reclaiming true histories of

00:59:47.640 feminist magic and of new moon magic 13 anti-capitalist tools for resistance and

00:59:54.180 re-enchantment available now wherever you get your books or audiobooks find out more at missingwitches.com

Missing Witches - November 02, 2023

WF Benebell Wen： It Meets You Where You Are, And Then It Will Take You To Higher Ground.

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