While my writing is at the core of what I do in the world, it's not the only thing I do. I'm also a visual artist, have a suitably multi-tradition ritual practice, am a long time user of plant medicine, and am exploring the uses of flower essences. Here are a few different ways we can connect.
Art
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Take a a look at some of my artwork. I take photographs, leave some of them alone and alter some of them in photoshop, make fabric art of various kinds, do collage and scratchboard.
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How to be a commie witch
This poster by my brother Ricardo, with Marx in full lotus, meditating, captures something about the way I integrate materialism in my historical and political thinking with the magical, spiritual, and energetic practices that so deeply enrich my life. Many of them are drawn from the ecological belief systems of my ancestors, who saw the universe and everything in it as completely interrelated. They also knew the power of story and of metaphor as tools for shaping the world.
I experience the divination and ritual practices of different cultures fascinating ways to converse with that great, interwoven universe, and with our own inner constellations. The stories and metaphors embedded in the I Ching, tarot cards, astrology, cowrie shells, the making of household altares, cleansing baths, spells, and all the other tricks in the bag, are a rich soil of cultural know-how that I love the way I love dreams. They offer deep gifts of insight and connection.
I experience the divination and ritual practices of different cultures fascinating ways to converse with that great, interwoven universe, and with our own inner constellations. The stories and metaphors embedded in the I Ching, tarot cards, astrology, cowrie shells, the making of household altares, cleansing baths, spells, and all the other tricks in the bag, are a rich soil of cultural know-how that I love the way I love dreams. They offer deep gifts of insight and connection.
Astrology
In keeping with the rest of my life, what I like best in astrology is the sense of pattern, movement, interconnection. I like the idea that the particular configuration of stars and planets at the moment of our birth, washes us with a unique blend of energies, like color washes that stain our skins. I like planetary aspects, what geometric shapes the various components of a chart make with each other, the story of personal strengths and challenges that tradition has spun from these celestial facts. The charts I do for people are not about predictions. They're about life paths, the struggles each of us face to be most fully, authentically ourselves, which for me, as a revolutionary, also means being engaged with our societies and our planet. Recently, people have started asking me for charts again, so I'm making them. Hand drawn, and radically interpreted.