Merry Feast of Saint Anthony and indeed Happy Friday 13th, Golgothii!
This, our forty-eighth episode, sees us celebrating – amongst other things – Saint Anthony’s incorruptible tongue, his veneration across the world, and his patronage of finding lost things, along with his many syncretisations across Worlds both Old and New with powers of doorways and the streets.
Our Demon(ised) patron of this episode is Eshu/Exu, that deified crossroads power who finds expression as Legba, Eleggua, and as Exu of Quimbanda: the Owner of the Road, the divinely-restless and rebellious movement of vital virtue and axé, and demonized trickster-friend who accuses and upturns towards good character and ancestral harmony.
Our Herb this time is Belladonna aka Deadly Nightshade, prompting discussion of toxicity, the coolness of sleep and death, witches’ flying ointments, and the both Venusian and Saturnine qualities of Atropos and her fatal scissors.
Our Mineral is Yangi aka Laterite, a stone so intrinsically tied to Eshu veneration and practice, upon which we pour the palm oil of slickened communication and the lubrication of the frictions of the world.
Our Magic is Idols, inspiring conversation about accusations of idolatry, and weighing both metaphysical representation and spiritual ontology; as well as some post-colonial considerations of fetishes and fetishism.
Our Daysign is Tochtli (Rabbit), a day intimately tied into passages of the moon, service to things bigger than ourselves, and indeed with Mayahuel, goddess of both fertility and maguey.
Our Beast is the Rooster, hot-blooded courageous crier of the barnyard, whose crowing call wards off ghosts and night-wanderers, and whose meat empowers broths and baths of choleric boldness and healing.
Our Geomantic Figure is Airy Solary Fortuna Minor, the Lesser Fortune: a marker of choler, and swiftness, that loyal but distractable escapologist who turns bad fortunes into good and vice versa; comparing and contrasting the warnings and familial remediations of the Odu Irosun Meji of Ifa and Diloggun.
Our Tarot of the day is the Two of Cups, by which we consider divinatory markers of love, fulfilling and unfulfilling relationships, caduceuses, and domestic as well as interpersonal bonds and boundaries.
Our Dead Magician to play us out is Jubiabá, the infamous Candomble de Caboclo priest and macumbeiro who courted controversy with the religious purists and local authorities of his day, whose Chair was lost and restored, and who was fictionalized in the eponymous novel by Jorge Amado.
We thank you for joining us in this two-headed exploration of both crowing and minding tongues, of meaningful relationships and the arguments you survive, and the ever-unfolding creativities of the crossroads.