00:01:00.760researchers welcome history makers and historians and storytellers welcome poets
00:01:07.780welcome sisters and coven mates and artists great conjure gatherers conference makers huge community
00:01:19.080movers welcome to the missing witches coven welcome to the great coven that's out there
00:01:27.960in the great circle in the dark we make between our ears with all our listeners and all our
00:01:33.340sharing for this Black History Month in 2022. We want to call in ancestors. We want to hear and
00:01:46.880uphold their names. We want to hold them together. And we want to learn what you think they want to
00:01:57.460teach us and what you're learning right now and get better educated and be better that's our small
00:02:07.120goal and we have the best possible guides all of these incredible incredible people we've gotten
00:02:13.380to meet over the years who gave us a little bit more of their time today thank you all so much
00:02:19.480for being here. The faces are joy incarnate. I'm just, I'm so happy to be here. I'm hoping to be
00:02:31.740largely silent today. But I really do just want to open the circle with Risa Weissing. Thank you
00:02:38.700so much for being here with us today. We asked our coven mate and collaborator and always teacher
00:02:48.120and friend, Zoe Flowers, if she would open the circle today by sharing a poem. Earth, we are the
00:02:55.540elements. Stay close to the ground, omnipresent. Six feet under, our mother's blood courses through
00:03:02.280our veins, out our wombs, down our legs, feeding hungry soil. We are dirty with your sadness,
00:03:09.500different from anyone you know, omnipotent. We lick wounds and swallow sorrows, name ourselves0.61
00:03:14.900goddess are not afraid of the dark call on god angels and ancestors when shit gets tight we are0.95
00:03:21.320round full figured full of ourselves water we bathe in basil and sea salt we're shackled but0.98
00:03:29.220jump ship anyway sharks fed on our flesh we are ocean now you eat us unknowingly thinking you
00:03:35.500drink it can drink us in believe you can suck us dry and quiet our storms but we are oya
00:03:40.460settling accounts we are ma'at shifting you can't box us in pin us down or tell our story
00:03:46.540fire we eat men whole when given the chance burn sage incense candles tools of the trade
00:03:53.540dance under moons full we are loud alive stretch things out to fit our shape you itch to see us
00:04:00.620put in our place we are witch wise woman and crone burned at the stake air but we are immortal
00:04:08.680reincarnated in the poems of our daughters we are phoenix eyes in the back of our head we are
00:04:14.160sankofa bird live betwixt worlds float through walls that you build around us blowing cigar
00:04:19.640smoke in your face we are juke joint speak out both sides of our mouths see your future in
00:04:24.840eggshells it's not looking good for you familiars at our side we tag miami haiti and norlands in
00:04:30.600chalk circles drink with legba at the crossroads walk on water masquerading as poet artist and mama
00:04:37.200we eat too many carbs fall in love with men who are afraid to love us back and turn our crooked
00:04:42.620noses up at your traditions jazz poetry and chardin are our religions we are black cat crossing
00:04:49.580your path that poem you wish you were smart enough to write the rhyme you're too afraid to spit0.99
00:04:53.620fucking up the mood we are the ejaculation that comes too quickly gas on a crowded elevator the0.99
00:04:58.640uninvited party guests flirting with your boyfriend and eating all your food an inconvenient truth0.99
00:05:03.460where are those shoes you can't afford to buy that thing you hate but can't let go those pants that1.00
00:05:08.100are too tight around your waist now the song that keeps playing in your head that chick you know1.00
00:05:12.460you're not good enough to bang the one your mama warned you about we are trouble urban sprawl
00:05:17.300haunting your daydreams we are muse inspiring you to get your game up teaching by example we are
00:05:22.560root worker oh be a lady and conjure woman the scary broad living at the end of the road alone1.00
00:05:28.000glamouring you through forked tongue we make miracles and yes motherfucker we do ride on1.00
00:05:31.960brooms. You should be afraid of women like us. Chastity belted, we fuck anyway. Do what we want1.00
00:05:37.520to do. Walk butt naked in the daytime and coming to you at night, carrying blessings and justice
00:05:42.920in our left hand, machetes and curses in our right. In praise of the witch. Thank you.0.99
00:05:51.020Thank you so much, Zoe. I don't know if you can see because you were reading, but you had such
00:05:56.480full body nods you had such a physical response from all of us thank you for reading that again0.85
00:06:04.760I'll probably have you back to read it seven more times just let's just fucking say it louder every
00:06:09.820time I love it would you start would you share an ancestor story with us so0.84
00:06:16.000sure you know what I was thinking about Zora Neale Hurston
00:06:20.620because we've been doing these black witch highlights and tomorrow is Zora Neale Hurston
00:06:27.540and I was just thinking about what it must have been like for her to go to the places that she
00:06:34.120went and excavating those stories and I was thinking about the when I read her books I was
00:06:43.280young so I didn't realize it was ancestor veneration and so I so I was just thinking
00:06:50.120about that as I was just like writing I was like wow she was like you know bringing bringing me in
00:06:56.740to influence like the work that I'm doing now and other creators so I want to call
00:07:04.340you know Zora Neale Hurston in yeah thanks for that yeah thank you do you want to um should we
00:07:12.500make a daisy chain we were thinking this time rather than amy and i talking every time do you
00:07:16.860want to call someone else in yeah sure i want to call in chris thank you thank you i'm calling in
00:07:24.500my grandmother she's not anyone special to the rest of the world but to me in my line
00:07:30.520she is all she is all and she is constantly with me constantly reminding me that my first
00:07:39.600magics happened in the kitchen and reminding me that that is where my magic belongs so healing
00:07:47.500through food caress before before you invite someone else for those listeners who missed the
00:07:53.580first time you're on missing witches can you tell us who you are and what your project is
00:07:59.380thank you there have been some changes my focus is now back where it should be health and healing
00:08:06.900primarily through what we put in our mouths, hence the focus on the kitchen. I am Caress Fitch,
00:08:13.580also known as Caress Mindful, and I am a holistic health coach.
00:08:19.980And my biggest project right now is the Swell Expo happening on March 19th, where we're bringing
00:08:26.300healthy sexuality into the conversation about health and wellness. And that's at SwellExpo.co
00:08:32.500and my website is mindfulpassions.co as well and I think I've touched all the bases did I get them
00:08:39.240all recent Amy? Yeah that was wonderful let's let's let's circle back before we circle forward
00:08:45.200Zoe will you tell us more about your projects and what you're working on these days? I forgot that
00:08:50.680bit I was just so excited to get started. Yeah no thank you Zoe my name is Zoe Flowers my pronouns
00:08:58.040are she and her and i am calling in today from the original land of the podunk people
00:09:05.720one of the many nations in connecticut and so um the work that i'm working on now i am a poet so i
00:09:13.320do have um a couple of books out one is in praise of the witch and that's pure poetry and the other
00:09:19.800one is from ashley just to angels that's a journey through womanhood and that is a series of
00:09:25.800interviews that I did with survivors of sexual violence, survivors of color and documented
00:09:31.580stories. So I've been doing domestic violence work for 20 years now. And I would say over the
00:09:38.280past five years, I've been shifting more into the healing and wellness space full time. So I'm also
00:09:45.600a healing practitioner. Oh, and my website is IamZoeyFlavers.com.
00:09:48.920caress you want to circle us forward now that we've circled back i would love to and i would
00:09:55.820like to call on dr beverly thank you caress i am beverly smith hello everybody i'm also known
00:10:06.640in conjure circles as dr beverly for those who are not aware of conjure and i know our steam panel
00:10:15.320is probably well aware of hoodoo, but for the listeners who may not be aware of hoodoo,
00:10:21.440hoodoo is an African American herbal magical path. We call upon the power of herbs and the
00:10:33.340power of our deities. And in the hoodoo circles, the overwhelming deity is Jesus Christ. I myself0.98
00:10:41.660I'm not a Christian, but I understand the power of invocation. I am from a Christian background,
00:10:50.500raised Christian, became a Druid for almost 30 years, still have that Druidic connection
00:10:57.840to the land, but I wanted something ancestral for my spiritual path. And I've always,
00:11:06.740since I was a child, been drawn to liberation. If people ask me what my religion is, it's
00:11:16.520liberation and justice. I work towards liberation and justice. And right now, that is my greatest
00:11:26.160focus. An ancestor that I would consider very important in my life was my grandmother. My
00:11:35.920grandmother was a staunch christian a seventh-day adventist all right and she was a staunch christian1.00
00:11:44.280and she always told us beware of the obia woman the obia woman is the medical herb medicinal
00:11:51.600medicinal and magical practitioner of jamaica uh my my my family on both sides of jamaican i'm
00:12:00.860first generation American. And I'm very proud to not be afraid of the obia woman, to not be
00:12:09.160concerned about the obia woman, but I've become an obia woman, which is very, it's very delightful0.95
00:12:15.820to me because while my grandmother always said, beware, beware, beware, she was teaching me so
00:12:21.960much about herbs. She was teaching me so much about, as Caress says, health and healing coming
00:12:30.920from your kitchen. Coming from your kitchen. You do not need fancy preparations. You do not need
00:12:42.120to get on the big herbal websites and find herbs that will give you the spiritual and magical
00:12:50.960protections and the health and the healing and the attraction and the uncrossing that you need,
00:12:59.700you can go to the grocery store, to the spice aisle. And that is where my focus is now. It's
00:13:09.120helping my clients and my students reclaim the old ways, some of these old ways that came with us
00:13:18.540On the transatlantic passage, when we were brought over as enslaved people, these old ways came with us. And while they did not have access to the same herbs that we have access in the new world, they brought those knowledges of those herbs forth.
00:13:42.000and my mission right now is in the interest of pursuing liberty, in the interest of pursuing
00:13:49.100accountability, in the interest of pursuing protection and freedom, I am teaching the old
00:13:59.240ways because I believe that what Dr. King said is right. Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice
00:14:10.500everywhere. And so I'm happy to join this panel and to listen to these esteemed voices
00:14:17.460and to see where we have meetings of the mind and where all of our ancestors
00:14:24.540join in the points of light, like the constellations and the stars. So thank you for
00:14:31.260having me. And I'm very happy to be here. Oh, should I call somebody? All right. Let me see.
00:14:38.500let me see let me see let me see you call somebody and also if you uh if you want to share
00:14:45.040her name if you want to share your grandmother's name oh her first her first name was Gertrude
00:14:51.980that's all I'm going to share because like I said she was a very staunch Christian so we I'm going
00:14:58.620to respect her because that's what we do with our ancestors we don't diss their ways we understand
00:15:05.720that their power came from their belief structures. And we give respect and we give honor to that.
00:15:14.180So to my dear departed grandmother, Ms. Gertie, as they called her, I love you. I give you respect
00:15:23.380and honor. And thank you for setting me on a path of self-understanding and self-love.
00:15:29.860and now I will call let's see let's see let's see let's see let's see oh I hope I get the
00:15:37.660professor's last name right professor Chirot that's me all right thank you take the floor
00:15:46.080oh this is wonderful uh Risa thank you for inviting us thank you for um you know I think
00:15:51.980Black History Month is important I you know I don't think it should be political in any way
00:15:56.660but here we are um so this is just a wonderful acknowledgement of this time and i i'm just
00:16:04.340i i'm blown away at the energy so um let me just say uh i i wish we had hoodoo covens
00:16:13.300we do have hoodoo covens they're looking they're emerging locally but i'm looking at the energy
00:16:19.220around here and i'm saying wow is there an organization is there something where
00:16:25.460we can all draw upon each other. So again, thank you for bringing us together. I don't have much
00:16:30.740to say. I will bring in Zora Neale Hurston and Lucille Clifton as my ancestors. They are
00:16:37.860my inspiration. Valerie Boyd, who was Zora Hurston's biographer, recently passed, so I call her name
00:16:46.180too um i i i'm really about documenting uh this this creative spirituality this consciousness that
00:16:56.100we call who do we call the divine feminine the divine black feminine i want to tell the story
00:17:02.340so it'll be there right for for for those who come after us so you know i i'm i'm a chronicler
00:17:09.220i'm a historian i'm an artist um i'm all the i i hope to be one tenth of the the scholar that uh
00:17:17.220mother zorra was but i really am about taking the past taking the words of our mothers and fathers
00:17:24.820and our our foreparents and and bringing them into the present and that means documenting them
00:17:30.340creating archives of what they did did so i'm i'm most comfortable engaging with the dead
00:17:36.020in the archive um and and that's where you can you can get to know them that's where they speak to
00:17:41.460you and that is actually where too we can recover the voices of people who have lost who have been
00:17:48.500lost to us um and that and that's really where i am it means that we're entering into this this
00:17:55.780powerful cycle where we are reclaiming the dead and bringing their wisdom uh into the present
00:18:02.980um and i think that's a beautiful thing for all people but specifically for black people in america
00:18:08.580where there's been a chain that's been broken this is a way of sort of uh creating those
00:18:14.980connections once again so so so that's what i'm about um i have so many current projects
00:18:20.900i'm not even going to mention them except to say that um i'm entering into my my crondom
00:18:26.500uh i i i'm i'm loving it i had no idea that as you get older it gets it gets even better um
00:18:35.560and i i i become more reflective about about what's going on in the world and the relationship
00:18:42.000of these beautiful magical spiritualities i would like to see something before i before i leave the
00:18:48.080planet and i don't plan on leaving the planet um until i'm 90 my my mother actually and that's in
00:18:52.720this she said i'm not going to pass till i'm 90 y'all get ready we gave her a party on her 90th
00:18:58.880birthday and the next morning she was gone so that that is the power of speaking your life and death
00:19:05.360into existence but i i plan on staying here for a little while and one thing i would like to see
00:19:10.640before i leave is a reclaiming of magic magical spirituality not as religion but as as as a power
00:19:19.280or not even as an alternative to religion,
00:19:22.000but as a power that is central to how we think
00:29:34.180and so maybe as another question after after we hear from kenya um i want to know what your
00:29:43.900ancestors are telling you to do and maybe what your ancestors are telling us telling you to tell
00:29:51.040us um in the spirit of valerie boyd's wrapped in rainbows and in her honor and there's kenya hi
00:29:58.000Kenya does it work now Kenya yes I am unmuted I came in and interrupted what she was saying
00:30:04.920and I didn't want to do that no you're you're perfect we wanted to spiral forward and now
00:30:09.900spiral back to make sure that we have your voice please tell us about your work and your projects
00:30:17.620what ancestors are coming through for you it's so nice to see you again
00:30:21.680Hi, it's good to see you. My name is Kenya Kowiak, Kenya T. Kowiak. And the ancestor that's coming through for me is Missouri Elizabeth. And that's a long story. She is an Indigenous ancestor as well as an African American ancestor. She's Eidos because our family is mixed.
00:30:45.200so she would be in nowadays terms muskogee and african but she's actually creek we use the word
00:30:52.480creek in my family and she's often here she watches over my daughter she visits um even though i try
00:31:01.260to keep my home very locked down she's like uh like who are you trying to keep up so i can't do
00:31:08.120anything about that she's gonna come when she wants to come and i had to learn to deal with it
00:31:12.280and figure out who she was because I was like okay who is this woman because you have to understand
00:31:18.000she would be my great grandmother and my grandma was a hundred and something 100 so we are long
00:31:27.080lived so that's going back quite a ways um I am an African-American witch and practitioner when I
00:31:33.420use the word witch I want to be clear because because the word witch is a word that we have
00:31:41.320at our arsenal or in our repertoire because the words that we would use individually for each
00:31:47.380tribal designation are lost to us so we use the language that we have available to us and for me
00:31:54.440it's English and for me linguistically the closest thing that I could use would be witch
00:32:00.260and even under that I would be closer primarily to a cunning woman if I were to try to use
00:32:08.200a phrase that might be more familiar to people, but I do use hoodoo because that's what I grew0.99
00:32:13.680up in. And again, I don't, this is where I divide against other people. I'm just going to let you
00:32:19.780know now I'm a little controversial. Yes, I practice hoodoo. However, I believe that hoodoo
00:32:25.800is the merchandise version of it. It's the one for the merchants to sell to people because people
00:32:31.380have polluted hoodoo a large amount by other cultural practices whereas african-american
00:32:38.420folk magic is a little bit more defined and a little bit more specific that i'm saying that
00:32:45.680these are traditions that are passed down and still growing and modifying and still you know
00:32:52.460revitalizing uh from the past present and the future that we can expect from the next generations
00:32:58.440our own particular and our own specific kind of magic uh projects that i'm working on right now
00:33:05.320i have a podcast on anchor fm called my magical cottage core life um i'm it's it's kind of an
00:33:13.700exercise in kindness it's giving me a chance to not focus per se just on magic there are some
00:33:20.540hidden episodes for my practitioners. I don't let everyone get to those. Also, I'm working on a book.
00:33:30.280Many of you may know that I used to write for Pagan Business Network and Pagan Business Network
00:33:35.920News. Those are currently on hold, and I also am the person behind the Detroit Conjurer and Folk
00:33:42.620Magic Festival. The movie that was being made for it is not going to happen, though. I'm sorry we
00:33:48.840lost the part of the footage and it's just not a it's not practical and I am currently working
00:33:55.460on a novel that incorporates many of the magical traditions as well as indigenous traditions
00:34:03.000of Michigan and folklore and folk magic and herbalism into it I'm not sure what you would
00:34:11.420call it my friend wants to call it Michigan Gothic there's a lot of magic a lot of spiritism
00:34:19.420a lot of animism and some things that are not of humankind in this book however it's very strange
00:34:29.500because this book doesn't feel like I'm writing it it's it they the characters come to me almost
00:34:35.480the same way as certain spirits come to me. And I've actually received knowledge writing this book
00:34:43.500that I've had to look up and say, well, wait a minute, where does that come from? And I literally
00:34:48.780have to go through books that are a couple of hundred years old. And I find out, oh, there's
00:34:53.800folklore regarding this. This is why you wrote that. And I'm like, okay, that's not me. That is
00:34:59.600that is not me that is absolutely not me so i think this book is a little bit more than a book
00:35:06.640and all the characters are african-american they're all african-american except one of the
00:35:12.620villains and that's not because they're not african-american because they're because the
00:35:18.160big bads are actually the evils are actually also african-american so there's a lot of magic
00:35:26.660involved in that there is another project coming up very soon and whenever the anthology is done
00:35:35.620i will be my work will be seen in a llewellyn book that's due to come out it should have come
00:35:42.600out the beginning of this year it may be at the end of this year it's an anthology of american
00:35:47.940folk magic. So you'll see me and some other local people here from the Detroit area in that
00:35:56.680anthology. I love how perfectly that this question about what are your ancestors demanding that you
00:36:05.820write? What what is coming through? What is the what are the stories that are that are pouring
00:36:11.220through you that you can kind of almost not help these days? Was the question that Amy posed to
00:36:15.980Dr. Shiro while you were cut out and then you came back with a story of stories coming through you
00:36:24.660last time Kenya and I spoke there it was so electric on the line everything kept shutting
00:36:30.700down and shutting off and coming back on and there was helicopters going overhead
00:36:34.560and she took me on the most electric auditory tour of what I'm now going to call Detroit Gothic
00:36:43.840because I love that title. I do want to pass it over to Dr. Chirot with this question and then
00:36:52.180let you take it from there, whether you want to jump in and ask each other follow-up questions
00:36:58.160or share more around this idea of what is coming through for you that needs to be told. Is that
00:37:04.800the best way to phrase it, Amy? I just, again, wanted to give some honor to Valerie Boyd,
00:37:10.320who wrote Wrapped in Rainbows, the Zora Neale Hurston biography, and to reiterate again that
00:37:16.080she did that because Zora Neale Hurston told her to. So I want to know what everyone's ancestors
00:37:23.140are telling them to do, and hopefully we can facilitate. You know, that made me stop and
00:37:30.340think for a second, and I guess this is something good that we can open up on. So I, you know, I
00:37:35.040i i don't i mean all of us we have a an ancestral system or a reverence or a practice
00:37:41.680but lately and lately meaning the past 10 years i've been working more with lifetimes and i i
00:37:49.040tend to think of lifetimes as a kind of ancestry of the soul right so you you're we we're souls
00:37:56.320embodied right the soul transmigrates across the planet across the cosmos coming it's it's part of
00:38:03.200the cycle and so i've been thinking a lot and meditating a lot and engaging a lot with myself
00:38:11.200as an as an ancestral soul which is a venerable practice in a lot of traditions and you know
00:38:18.640a lot of my new age friends know what i'm talking about um i've been thinking about it in that way
00:38:24.880i also like to think of collective ancestors so we all have our personal lineages we all have our
00:38:32.480family ancestors the family dead but one thing that seems to come up again and again and again
00:38:38.160particularly when whenever black folk are together are these collective you know again in the language
00:38:44.080of the new age or even of a kind of mystical science you call them consciousnesses right
00:38:50.000the the collective consciousness of the African ancestor that's something I've been exploring
00:38:58.160engaging um a lot and and and and not just me i see a lot of people talking about the great spirit
00:39:07.360of the collective ancestors so you know my my ancestors are really laid back i i i you know
00:39:15.440they don't demand much of me except for you know some coffee and some food from time to time but
00:39:21.200i'm very very close to them but these these other realms i i feel like they're being drawn upon and
00:39:28.400they they are becoming part of the larger human collective consciousness now i'm using words from
00:39:35.360pop psychology but i think all of you know what i'm talking about that there you know we have our
00:39:40.720own dead we have our own lineage that goes back to the beginning but there's also an ancestral
00:39:46.640consciousness that all of us have as cultural groups as as tribes as nations as countries
00:39:56.000that that to me there's a lot of action there um there's a lot of engagement and possibility there
00:40:02.800so so that's what i've been thinking about um but yeah it's it's it's a beautiful moment because
00:40:08.720these worlds are coming together in ways that we we just haven't seen it it was it's been
00:40:15.840prophesied that way right this is we we live in cycles but you can feel it you can see it
00:40:22.960you can and it's very very exciting i i'm not an afro pessimist this is this is the the newest
00:40:28.560fashion among my my academic peers i'm actually i guess if there's an optimist an afro optimist
00:40:36.000the future is present the past is present it's all converging in this wonderful way and i i feel
00:40:45.200i'm actually gonna choke up a little i feel so grateful to be here on this planet in this place
00:40:52.880right now because i didn't have to be right none of us we could have you know we could be on venus
00:40:57.920or something but so grateful to be here so ancestors aren't demanding that much i think
00:41:04.880i'm demanding much of myself but there's a lot going on for us to grasp and that that just gives
00:41:10.960me such joy so i i would love more reflections on that and uh maybe to open it up if everyone
00:41:17.120has has talked i'm so happy to be here and and thank you again thank you
00:41:24.480you must have been reading my mind the overwhelming message that is continuing
00:41:32.320to come through from my ancestral line is one of practicality
00:41:36.960that there is a lot going on in this world right now and that we should not be seduced
00:41:47.500by the illusory and instead keep our feet firmly planted on the ground and partake of what we know
00:41:56.900is real and that is everything from food to news to friendships and connections
00:42:05.600the overwhelming response that I keep receiving is keep it real well we are living in interesting
00:42:17.420times and the one thing that I agree with caress about I'm not the one thing but a thing that she
00:42:26.640just said that I seriously agree with is practicality. The thing about African0.98
00:42:36.120spiritual traditions, once you strip away ritualized aspects, if there are any, once you
00:42:48.360strip that away, you're left with what is practical? What will help me feed my children?
00:42:56.760What will help me keep my job? What will help me keep a house, a roof over my head?
00:43:04.920what will help me live my best life in freedom and equality. It comes down to practicality.
00:43:18.820And what my wards are telling me right now is that this all has happened before
00:43:25.920and will happen again. It goes back to Dr. Shereau talking about
00:43:33.680the non-linear aspect of our spiritual selves. We are these flesh bodies, but we are also
00:43:49.720spiritual entities living in this these flesh bodies and I find the concept of I am my own
00:44:01.240ancestor to be very enlightening and very fresh to me I I I I I'm I'm processing that right now
00:44:09.940because I'm digging it. And my wards are telling me that when things look different, all of us who
00:44:22.680are our freedom fighters are fighting for largely the same thing, the right to live and let live,
00:44:32.320the right to have gender and sexual freedoms, the right to have reproductive rights,
00:44:42.880our right to due process, our right to vote. All right. We all, our rights come in intersection
00:44:52.980with that. And what my words are telling me is, remember that none of us are free until we all
00:45:04.000are free. So while I do concentrate on Black women, while I do teach what I know as an elder
00:45:17.700to younger women, to younger people in my tradition, it's because I want to raise them up
00:45:31.040with the understanding that freedom and liberty is a human right. And we should be fighting for
00:45:42.680those things without political affiliation. I know you heard me. I know all y'all heard me.
00:45:52.360Without political affiliation. If I believe in bodily autonomy, if I believe in my right to do
00:46:05.560what I will with my body, then I must fight for other people's rights. And so right now,
00:46:14.520I am focusing on supporting those who are pressing forward for their rights. I have
00:46:26.720always been at the forefront. I'm getting too old now, but I've always been at the forefront
00:46:33.560of showing up at these protests, at all of these protests. I was there for Tawana Brawley
00:46:38.940in like 1996. I was marching during the Reagan years because we all know what was going on with
00:46:47.740that. And when the Iraq war started, I protested against it because I am a mother. And when the
00:46:58.640Iraq war protested, I still had a little one sleeping in the bed with me, okay? As a feminine
00:47:07.780person, I want our children to come up healthy, to come up empowered, and to come up free. And for
00:47:19.740me, that is what conjure does. Conjure speaks to the conjure, which is another, another capital C
00:47:27.880for hoodoo. Conjure speaks to the practical aspects. And right now my wards are saying
00:47:36.720we need practical protection for those who are freedom fighters. We need practical protections
00:47:48.480for those who are dissenters. What bothers me, I think, having been a protester now at one protest
00:47:59.640or the other for over 30 years, is that the common thread that I see developing over these years
00:48:09.420is that depending on whether you agree with the protest is how you paint the protesters.
00:48:20.600If there are largely Black, Brown, and Indigenous people in that protest, they are painted as thugs.0.90
00:48:27.320If there are largely Caucasian people in a protest, they are painted as Nazis and white0.99
00:48:34.200supremacists. All right. And so I am trying to look past the slurs and past the insults and on0.99
00:48:43.260a practical level, what is appropriate, what is liberating, what is freedom. And sometimes that's
00:48:53.880a very hard thing to square away, to reconcile with some of my other thinking. But what my
00:49:07.600ancestors are telling me right now is that I have to be on the right side of history
00:49:14.300in all of my endeavors. That's what my ancestors are saying to me right now. So practically
00:49:22.880speaking, I am teaching people how to magically set up their wards, what sort of herbal concoctions
00:49:32.960they need to be making for their protection baths, for their uncrossing baths, for their
00:49:39.100magical baths. I am teaching people what sort of liberation magic they need to do to keep the law
00:49:48.200way, what kind of liberation magic they need to do to hold on to their children. Because what's
00:49:54.600scaring me right now is that people want people to lose their livelihood. If they don't agree
00:50:04.240with your opinion, they want, and when I say they, I mean people who don't agree want the other
00:50:14.200people to lose their livelihoods. They want the people they don't agree with to lose their
00:50:18.640children. They want the people who they don't agree with to lose their homes and their means
00:50:23.780of taking care of themselves. And to me, no matter who you're pointing that at, that's injustice.
00:50:32.600I can't wink my eye at one set of injustice and then turn around and say, but rah, rah, rah,
00:50:39.820liberty and justice for all. For all means all. And I know I can spell all. A-L-L. Oh my God.
00:50:49.380A-L-L. All right. So this is my feeling because I have always stood up for the underdog,
00:50:59.280no matter where they're coming from. You know, I've always stood up for the underdog and it's
00:51:05.200important for me to teach those who are coming behind me, because someday they will be recognizing
00:51:13.420me as their ancestor. Someday I will be, if I have lived a good life, if I have done what I can
00:51:23.160for my people, my descendants will have my picture on their ancestor altars and will be asking me
00:51:31.260from my wisdom from beyond. Because I do not believe in linear time. I believe that we all
00:51:41.440keep coming back. And that's why our ancestors can reach to us from a non-linear perspective
00:51:50.320and give us that wisdom that they have gained just by living their lives.
00:51:57.380so i'm trying to keep my work very very practical i'm trying to make i deal with a lot of sex
00:52:04.620workers i'm trying to make sure that they're safe on the job i'm trying to make sure that my clients
00:52:10.040have enough to eat and that they know the magical things to do to increase their prosperity
00:52:16.800so they know what they need to do magically to hang on to their jobs so they know what they need
00:52:23.920to do magically, that when they send their children out every day, those children return
00:52:29.900home to them. That to me is my spiritual practice, is dealing with, we call them the needs or the
00:52:39.300deficiencies of everyday life and finding a way to fill those needs. And that's what my ancestors
00:52:49.620are calling upon me to do right now is to fill those needs primarily and then secondarily
00:52:57.440to teach my ways to the next generation so that someday they can look on me and call
00:53:11.600And so that someday I can come back and continue this work in the future in a different flesh
00:53:18.780bang. That's what I'm up to these days. Zoe, I saw you having full body reactions to some of that.
00:53:24.940Do you want to respond and tell us what your ancestors are telling you to do?
00:53:30.760Sure. Well, like Dr. Chereau, my ancestors don't really, you know, they don't really require
00:53:38.360a lot from me, keeping my altars and things like that. But actually what I've been doing for the
00:53:47.580past four years now, maybe five. Um, I've actually been involved in a practice called
00:53:54.920nowalism. And so, um, a lot of it is based on clearing the bloodline and shedding. So I've0.68
00:54:05.240been in a process of shedding a lot of the things that live in DNA. And we work with a set of,
00:54:11.620you know, animales. And, um, so it's interesting because I feel like all the other practices
00:54:20.900that I've been engaged in have prepared me for this piece. And, um, just recently I've actually
00:54:32.880gone back to work, work that I hadn't done in a while, which is working with the angelic realm
00:54:39.200and so I've been doing this shedding because the thing about the ancestor piece is not all of our
00:54:47.300ancestors you know we a lot of us have mixed heritage and so a lot of the things that we
00:54:53.760come up against could be because we have some ancestor that might not believe we're supposed
00:54:57.320to be here to prosper they might not believe that women identify people should work they may not
00:55:01.840they may not be a person of color and might actively be blocking our path and then we go0.99
00:55:08.680into circle with other people, then we bring all their people in and we don't know them either.1.00
00:55:12.580Right. And so I've actually pulled myself out of like ancestor combining for the past four years.
00:55:19.400So I could cleanse and cleanse and cleanse and cleanse. And so now I've been back on,
00:55:28.840you know, bringing in this angelic work and cleansing across lifetimes. And that's something
00:55:38.100that I've been working with, with my students as well, is going back and getting the fragmented
00:55:45.120pieces of ourselves. And because I've been in domestic violence work and sexual assault work
00:55:50.260for 20 years, so we know that things happen to the body where a lot of times we're checked out
00:55:55.360and, you know, we're disassociated. So a lot of the work that I do is bringing people back into
00:55:59.700their bodies and helping them to see that magic is possible. I think a big thing for me also
00:56:07.920is the joy piece the happiness piece and the laughter piece because one of the things I found
00:56:13.780in social movements is I feel like it's changing but for me it's always been like the hardest
00:56:20.100worker the last one in the office the last one at the protest like I've been that person
00:56:24.820and it's largely I found it's black and brown women that are doing that work1.00
00:56:29.700and we find ourselves very sick at the end of our lives and our non
00:56:34.960folks of color counterparts are like going on to have insurance and just having very lovely lives
00:56:43.440and we find ourselves passing away alone not having health care and things like that and so
00:56:49.200a lot of the work that I'm doing with younger people is to help redefine what activism looks
00:56:56.840like redefine what social consciousness looks like to actually it's okay to center yourself
00:57:04.240It's okay to say no. It's okay to not be in every group. It's okay to not answer every email. And again, this is all of the shedding because I just feel like and have experienced that just the sucking, the extraction of our happiness, our joy, our health again, and then we're just like shells of a people.
00:57:27.640then they're on to like the next brown or black person to extract from. And so I'm really working1.00
00:57:35.780to restructure that narrative for people, restructure this idea about resistance and
00:57:41.720this like narrative of resistance, because for me, what we resist persists. And so I'm just,
00:57:48.220you know, just wanting to shift some things for people and for myself and just constantly have
00:57:53.980an expanded view and not be so attached to what happens here on earth because earth isn't the
00:58:02.540final say so it's like how can I attach to the clouds how can I attach to whatever is beyond
00:58:10.560beyond beyond how can I gain strength from that where's the magic in that also so the thing about
00:58:17.820you know my learnings around manifestation one of the things I learned early on was that you had to
00:58:23.020be able to feel the thing, the frequency of the thing that you want to manifest because of the
00:58:31.920shame, because of the guilt, because of the collective consciousness, because of the trauma.
00:58:36.640These are things that we have to break through to be able to get, believing that you deserve it,0.96
00:58:43.240believing that it's possible for you, which are all the things that, you know, the myth of white
00:58:48.380supremacy culture has tried to right all the things I pray I'm doing this I'm doing that
00:58:57.040why can I not break through and so for me it's like let's break through I have so many thoughts
00:59:05.860on this yes yes all of that yes hey so I recently did a lot of interviews for my dissertation
00:59:12.200and i spoke with uh this uh black witch jujube sam um who i'm sure many of you're familiar with
00:59:21.180um and also this woman uh black witch yalosha oshunyemi akalatunde who is also a wonderful
00:59:28.540black witch oh yeah i love her too she's she's fantastic um and then and and and i've been and
00:59:38.100i've been thinking about this too along like manifestation and and juju bae says sam says
00:59:44.160just we need to cultivate a a thought as black folks we need to cultivate the thought in us
00:59:50.920of you deserve a baby you deserve the good things you deserve the house you deserve the car you
00:59:57.460deserve the healthy romantic relationships you deserve all the good things in life um because
01:00:03.360often, yeah, anti-blackness teaches us that we don't, we don't deserve these things, um, that
01:00:08.940we're unworthy, um, yeah, I struggle with that myself, um, but, so I wanted to read this, this,
01:00:17.840um, quote that I'm actually writing, it's from, uh, Iolosha Oshunyemi, she says, so she's a
01:00:23.800IFA practitioner, um, and in IFA, um, practitioners, myself included, believe that you, um,
01:00:33.360your ori your spirit your um your ancestor your spirit intuition maybe some people call it um
01:00:41.620connects with olu dumare god and says you know you make a deal about your destiny this is what
01:00:47.780i'm going to be doing um for this one i'm agreeing to for my lifetime right um and then you come out
01:00:54.740and you know to life and do these things so she says so you make this agreement with god with
01:01:01.520Odumade, before ascending to earth. And she says, before you were born, you laid out a life for
01:01:06.960yourself. You don't have to worry if you deserve it. You already gave it to yourself before you
01:01:11.800got here. So getting it is a matter of remembering that it's yours, not thinking people who look like0.73
01:01:17.740me don't get to have this. The Odu, the sacred text, says no one can bless you without the
01:01:24.180consent of your Ori. We'd be blocking ourselves. When you stop, you realize there's a life that0.99
01:01:30.000you knew you were supposed to have. She said, my mother told me that when I had my first child,
01:01:35.240she says, quote, it's only your prayers that will feed this house and this child. Don't let anyone
01:01:40.900make you think that that's your husband, your job, or the money that you receive. She said,
01:01:46.240whenever you're down to your last and you don't know what you're supposed to do, then pray,
01:01:51.180and it will come to you, and truly, like magic, it will be there. She says, what we owe the universe
01:01:55.900is the fulfillment of this destiny but to do that our needs must be met she says i gotta live by the
01:02:01.560beach i can't fulfill it nowhere else but you're but you're scared to say that and once you say
01:02:06.920that the universe is like it's like you're right that was our agreement here you go the house by
01:02:11.060the ocean but too often it's us waiting for someone else's approval when they don't have
01:02:15.960anything to do with it right so she's saying it's not the job it's not the man it's not the partner
01:02:21.100It's not that it's none of that. It's the powers within ourselves. And these are tricky concepts to grab to to to talk about. Right. Because we don't want to we don't want to lean into the again, that prosperity gospel that tells us that it's our fault if we don't have things that we have.
01:02:42.320I mean, you know, white supremacist, capitalist patriarchy, right?
01:02:45.420Like, we're here, you know, this is real, suppression is real.
01:02:51.320And so we don't want to lean into that.
01:02:53.460We don't want to lean into new age kind of ideas that we are only, that maybe we're doing something wrong or we're out of alignment or like we're to blame.
01:03:09.100we have to think about this we have to think about manifesting the worlds that we want to0.98
01:03:14.960create in the world that we want to have for ourselves with a black feminist framework in
01:03:19.840mind with uh an africana religious framework too um and i think i think it's happening um
01:03:27.700i'm definitely think that's the message that's the message i'm thinking through right now how
01:03:32.400How do we parse out the toxic capitalism from the very real need and very real, I would say truth, in my opinion, of, you know, God is good, right, of the ancestors supporting us, of the abundance that is possible.
01:03:53.220I want to thank you so much for bringing Iolosa into the circle. She's never been on the show. And now I'm like, I'm going to email her like tomorrow. I quoted her book in our first book. Ona Agbani was an amazing teacher for me and Iolosa herself. So listeners, instagram.com slash got to be ocean. That's the number two and the letter U ocean. Definitely check out Iolosa's work. Thank you again for bringing her to this circle.
01:04:21.580so kenya do you want to tell us what your ancestors are telling you to do or respond to
01:04:27.040anything that's been said so far i'd love to hear from you again if you do so right now and i don't
01:04:33.740want to say just right now as in the last you know month or so but in the last i want to say
01:04:38.660three-year arc has been an ever-increasing movement toward re-embracing my original path
01:04:46.520which is you know agrarian it's always been agrarian um and when i say that i've always
01:04:53.820cycled with the agrarian calendars not the gregorian calendar i live my life by the moon
01:05:00.220we plan by the sun that's one of the um that's a paraphrase of the actual saying from the black
01:05:06.900moon grove i remember when i first started the black moon grove and i had my students
01:05:13.100I told them we live our lives by the sun excuse me we plan our days by the sun we live our lives
01:05:19.740by the moon and one of the reasons I had said that was because I felt that we needed to connect
01:05:28.140not necessarily with the European version of the moon cycles but what those moon times meant
01:05:34.720which is why the calendars that I used I felt inspired that I had to use indigenous calendars
01:05:41.620this area. It's been everything from learning Indigenous language, because as we know, English
01:05:48.420is a foreign language, to Indigenous practices. And when I say Indigenous, I don't just mean
01:05:54.920people from Turtle Island. I mean, when I can, my far back as I can go, African traditions,
01:06:04.240uh specifically african-american when i would visit down south i would try to keep track of
01:06:11.620where the graves were off the plantations because there were no headstones when i was younger
01:06:17.740it was just a lot of grass and you had to remember how many steps from the road was the first grave
01:06:24.860and then you had to remember how many steps from that grave was the next grave i had to look at
01:06:30.360the grass to remember what the grass looks like when it grows over a grave that all ties into the
01:06:35.060fact that for me even from the book from the festivals being outside that I hold everything
01:06:41.740has been getting back to the magic of the land eventually I've always stated you know that I
01:06:47.840wanted to have a small shop uh planting herbs and whatnot but it's beyond that I want to get
01:06:56.380involved in making resource wells for communities that don't have water so it can be clean. I mean,
01:07:01.980come on, I live in the state with Flint. I live in the state with the Isabella Indian Reservation.
01:07:06.460I want to get back to planting trees, but not the trees you would think.
01:07:11.420You know, it's popular to plant, you know, cherry trees, grapevines, whatnot, but I want to plant
01:07:18.760nanny berries. I want to see velvet leaf grow and thrive for cordage. I want to teach people
01:07:26.180how to make their own cordage. And I have done these things. I have taught this to my students.
01:07:32.060I have taught this to my friends. I have taught these things to my mentees. I am watching a
01:07:40.400revival of back to the land and permaculture and the people who are involved are magical
01:07:46.960and spiritual people. And that's where my ancestors are pushing me. That's what the original
01:07:53.620instructions were every land has original instructions if you are not native to that land
01:08:00.360you bring the knowledge and the dna of the original instructions from the land that you
01:08:05.980traveled from and it unites in the blood that you carry with the indigenous and original instructions
01:08:12.280you have in the land where you are which places you as a permanent sojourner but also as a resident
01:08:20.600of the land as well. And as one, you have a responsibility as a magical and a mystical person
01:08:27.120to care for the land, not only on a physical level and on an agrarian level, but on a magical
01:08:34.860and spiritual level. That's something that I'm drawn back to. Even with classes, I've limited
01:08:41.560the amount of classes that I teach, the amount of festivals that I throw, because I had to do a
01:08:48.080great reset just to get people back to the point of at the end of the day we our bodies move with
01:08:57.240the tides we came from this earth we will return to this earth we are of the earth and because of
01:09:04.680that we have a certain responsibility to learn how to cohabit with the other creatures on this earth
01:09:12.500the four-legged, the winged, the crawlet, the swimmers, the green people, all of these things
01:09:19.840were put here to accomplish certain goals. And if I'm going to drop something, if we're really here0.76
01:09:26.240to talk today, let me drop something really fast. One of the hardest lessons that I've had to teach
01:09:32.320and that I find myself going back to it over and over is that whether you believe we are creations
01:09:39.700to be made to take care of things, or whether you believe that the gods, the divine are there to
01:09:45.620take care of us, no matter what your belief system is. When we look at these different
01:09:50.860embodiments of life on this planet, even down to the stones, you have to understand that for some
01:09:59.040of us, we don't see them as disconnected to us. These are spirits or these are emanations that
01:10:06.860chose to incarnate and survive and serve on this world and in this world on their journey in that
01:10:15.620capacity. If they chose to be a tree as a standing person, that's what they chose. So how dare we
01:10:23.400indiscriminately clear cut and burn down anything without purpose? Yes, they gave themselves in
01:10:30.840sacrifice for us to be able to use them according to some beliefs but we also have to know that
01:10:37.080gluttony and greed and rampant exploitation for no good purpose is not part of our original
01:10:44.600instructions and the magician the witch the spirit worker the priest the priestess whatever you call
01:10:52.840yourself is a little bit to the side and a little bit to the front when it comes down to reminding
01:11:00.700people and reminding ourselves that there are actually original instructions. And our job
01:11:07.820is to not only care for this creation, to live in this creation, to continue forward through
01:11:14.500this creation, but to teach and assist in the creation and help maintain it. And magic is one
01:11:22.900of the ways we do that. And in order to practice magic, you have to be aware. In order to have that
01:11:29.120awareness. You have to know your path. And for me, one day, I will probably walk into a wood
01:11:35.480and disappear. You might find pieces, but that's what's going to happen. And all woods aren't made
01:11:43.640of trees. Sometimes woods are the artificial woods we create with urban landscapes. And our job
01:11:51.340is not just to be of that place, but to help the peoples in that place, whatever they look like,