Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Small Dud help from Small Area Small. It's so funky,
So welcome to small those this podcast. I hope that
those of you who just listen to the podcast are
(00:24):
not scared by this title, because I know that we
definitely have a lot of you know, religious believers that
listen to this podcast, and I don't want to scare
you away because this episode is at some times going
to be I would say, a bit challenging, but I
hope that you'll push yourself because there is no goal
(00:45):
of disregard or disrespect for your belief system happening in
this episode. Side effects of the misrepresentation of mysticism. The conversation,
though requires reference to namely Christianity, because the misrepresentation of
missis in the United States is directly related to Christianity
(01:05):
positioning mysticism that was traveled here by the people they
stole as the occult. It actively dissolved and disassociated people
with what they were grounded in so that they could
more easily control them. They did the same thing to
the Native American people here in this nation. And so
(01:26):
we're talking about within this conversation, it's not the whole conversation,
but we're talking about the necessity to call that out,
because we can have both. You can believe in what
you believe in while not chatting on what someone else
believes in, particularly if your shattery is attached to oppressors
(01:48):
bringing this to you through the lens of their own
interpretation of the Bible. Our guest today is somebody who
I came across on these instagrams, and I'm gonna definitely
tell her how I pretty much.
Speaker 2 (02:05):
I appreciate her thought process.
Speaker 1 (02:07):
But one of the things that I love about having
this podcast is that I just get to interview and
talk to so many different people from so many walks
of life that still managed to land in similar vibrations
and in similar trajectories of thought. And that lets me
know that I ain't bugging, and it lets me know
y'all ain't bugging, and also keeps the hope alive.
Speaker 2 (02:28):
It also helps to fight off.
Speaker 1 (02:30):
The nihilism that everything's gone to shit, right. I know
that now more than ever, we really need that here
in the United States. For everyone who's not in the
United States that's listening. I'm actually curious how this episode relates,
particularly to you and how mysticism exists within your social sphere,
because here it is very often seen as something that
(02:54):
like weirdos are a part of. It's definitely sequestered in
this mind state of oh, that's what those people do,
not regular people like us, that's what those people do.
But yet people love astrology, right, People love wishing when
they throw a penny in a fountain, okay.
Speaker 2 (03:15):
Or when they blow out candles, and so.
Speaker 1 (03:18):
The reality that magic and the hope of things being
realized and manifested will happen is not solely attached to
the occult.
Speaker 2 (03:31):
Okay.
Speaker 1 (03:33):
And I'm really excited for this conversation because this is
somebody who takes her work incredibly seriously and who has
been really creative and innovative with their work in such
a manner that I feel like only black women can do.
So we're here for side effects of the misrepresentation of mysticism.
Speaker 2 (03:55):
We are here with Daniel and Knuckles, the.
Speaker 1 (03:58):
Oracle, that's supposed oracle, the people's oracle. It is a
strong statement as an instagram name.
Speaker 3 (04:07):
It really is. It is, it is.
Speaker 2 (04:10):
Where was this born from? Okay?
Speaker 3 (04:13):
Real talk? A person whose name in gendershell remain unnamed.
Very early on in my astrological interest and studies. I
would just be like, hmm, this looks like this is
going to happen and this is here, and that person
started calling me the oracle like very jokingly, very like.
Speaker 2 (04:31):
Ha ha ha.
Speaker 3 (04:32):
But then time passed and the stars aligned for me
to begin this iteration of my work, and it literally
does dropped in my spirit like that the people's oracle.
I was like, that's good. And I have a knack
for coming up with names anyway, but that one that
came my big one.
Speaker 1 (04:52):
All right, listen, we thank them, appreciate it, thank you well.
I So, by the way, I got a light scolding
from Dana, just a light scolding from Dana when I
began following her, because then I joined a live and
you were like, I don't know what took me in
(05:13):
to seel so long, because we've been saying the same thing.
Speaker 2 (05:16):
And it was not like that, like the algorithm didn't
bring me tell you my plot. They were trying to
keep us apart.
Speaker 3 (05:25):
It was truly truly a conspiracy, I'm convinced.
Speaker 1 (05:29):
So the way that I found my way to Dana
lin Knuckles was somehow you came across my algorithm path
when I was still on Instagram, speaking honestly and definitively
about Democrats in a way that I really have only
seen myself speak about. As far as black women, I
(05:50):
feel like I see black men all the time, but
you were the only black.
Speaker 2 (05:55):
Women at that point that I saw being like.
Speaker 1 (05:59):
Hello, op, because it was I mean, I was really
attacked for I didn't even say that.
Speaker 2 (06:08):
I was just like she.
Speaker 1 (06:11):
She's not enough, like there has to be more, and
you said the same. So I just want to thank
you in public because I thank you on DM, but
I want to thank you actually know what I actually
reposted you and was like you.
Speaker 3 (06:24):
Said you did you did appreciate that. I appreciate that,
a little amplification for your girl over.
Speaker 2 (06:30):
Here, amplification.
Speaker 1 (06:32):
And so then I was looking further and I saw
that you live in New Orleans and that you are,
you know, an astrologer, and that you're somebody who's tapped
in deeper than just like on the page, but in spirit.
And so that's where we came to this topic of
side effects of misrepresentation of mysticism. And this isn't really
(06:55):
an interview, it's a conversation. So you can ask me things,
I can ask you things. I just want to make
that a parent because as of late, it's been very
top of mine because I had seen Sinners, and I
saw a lot of people saying they didn't want to
go see Sinners because they were like, it's the occult,
it's the devil, it's vampires.
Speaker 3 (07:13):
And I'm while y'all drinking blood and body calling it Jesus. Okay,
I'm just saying.
Speaker 1 (07:24):
I'm just saying, I'm not even shading that you're doing that.
Speaker 2 (07:28):
I'm just shading the hypocrisy of it, you know.
Speaker 1 (07:32):
So I would love to just hear where does mysticism
exist in your world on a daily basis? Because New
Orleans is a unique experience.
Speaker 3 (07:42):
So I'm actually originally from Chicago. That is where I
was raised, spent my whole life, and I grew up
in what many of your listeners may have never heard of,
which is the Pentecostal assemblies of the world.
Speaker 2 (07:55):
Okay, put me on.
Speaker 3 (07:57):
And in this particular so this particular denomination split off
from like so you got the Kojaks and then you
got the paw like they split off, Okay, and they
split off because the Kojaks were like you got to
get baptized in the name of the Father, the Son,
and the Holy ghosts. And the paw was like, no,
you just get baptized in the name of Jesus. Ridiculous, right, I.
Speaker 2 (08:17):
Was like, oh, okay, okay, yeah, very vulous.
Speaker 3 (08:20):
But anyways, so like my spiritual upbringing was, if you
die and you ain't been water baptized in the name
of Jesus terry for the Holy Ghost with evidence of
speaking in tongues, you're going to go to Hell. Oh right,
So all of that that was really what it was.
(08:40):
That was my Black Church experience. However, Okay, I don't
have no hard feelings about it. Okay, I don't because
I would not be doing what I do now if
I had not. I call that my spiritual initiation, okay. Right.
It doesn't always come in a form that is congruent
with your present day beliefs, but does give you that
(09:01):
opening into mysticism that gives you some language or an
idea that, like, not everything is what it appears to
be right, and that there is an order of some
kind that is behind what seems like surface chance and chaos. Now,
what you want to call that order is up to you.
But I think that's kind of what the core of
(09:23):
mysticism is that there's like an order, there's something beneath
the surface, beyond the face value. Yes, right, there's a
pattern somewhere. And you could call it Jesus, you could
call it who do, You could call it Vodom, you
can call it Santaio, Condablo. Whatever.
Speaker 1 (09:40):
Well, let's talk about that, because there's so much connotation
that has been applied by colonizers to.
Speaker 2 (09:49):
The mystical work of folks from the.
Speaker 1 (09:51):
Continents who have been disseminated throughout the Americas, right, And
it's all those things that you just named, And what
would you say, is like the primary miss representation that
you've witnessed in mysticism?
Speaker 2 (10:08):
Ooh oh, it's the first one that comes to mind.
Speaker 3 (10:13):
Oh man.
Speaker 2 (10:14):
I mean like, I went on.
Speaker 1 (10:16):
A date with Nick Cannon once and he was like,
I don't want my children to ever read Harry Potter.
Speaker 2 (10:23):
This is before Mariah, this before the kids.
Speaker 1 (10:25):
I don't want my children to ever read Harry Potter
because it's the devil.
Speaker 2 (10:28):
It's about the devil. And I was just like, I
don't think so. And I said, well, what else is
the devil? And he was like voodoo? Oh, And I
wonder what he would say about that now.
Speaker 1 (10:41):
But which is you know what I'm saying, But it
speaks to how you were like, you know, people kind
of go through these processes, and so that was an
example of a misrepresentation. I feel like people are constantly
I've constantly heard voodoo represented as like, oh, that's the devil,
it's dark magic, it's dark works, it's devil work.
Speaker 3 (10:58):
Yeah, I would say that. Hmm, what is the first
thing that comes to mind? Oh, that's what came to
my mind. Have you ever seen this show foundation? Yes,
Apple Beat? Okay, So the Sinax people, right, which is
like the black yes, right, the black planet.
Speaker 2 (11:18):
So to speak, right, the desert, the one where they're walking.
Speaker 3 (11:21):
Oh no, no, no, Sinx is the one where the
girl came from what's her name. I'm just with the water, yes,
the water okay, right, and they're flooded. So they're like
having a climate catastrophe, right, Yeah, their whole religion is
like the reason why we have in this climate catastrophe
is because y'all read books and so.
Speaker 1 (11:45):
Taking me back because I forgot you know, that was
one of them shows where I dedicated myself and then
realized at the end, it was still a white Savior
show and I was like.
Speaker 2 (11:52):
Ah, that threw me off.
Speaker 3 (11:55):
And then of course there's like that scene where there's
a terrorist attack on Trenton and why they got to
make it sound like they're speaking Arabic like you guys
can't help but to be racist. It is.
Speaker 2 (12:06):
It's really not. They don't know how not.
Speaker 3 (12:09):
To be truly, it's inborn. So anyways, on sinex though,
the whole, like religion and culture, is around how curiosity
is a sin, yes, right, yes, seeking knowledge in books
like the university has flooded and it's off limits and
you will become a heretic and excommunicated and drowned if
(12:33):
you're caught with books and reading. And I feel like,
like to me, that is exemplary of how mysticism is misrepresented,
the idea that you can even be curious about something
other than Christianity, Judaism, Islam and even Islam. I know, right,
Like once you veer outside of that, it's the devil
(12:58):
and it's evil.
Speaker 1 (12:59):
Yes, yes, anything outside of there's no spectrum.
Speaker 3 (13:04):
No, it's very black and white, it's very black and white.
I remember when I was a kid, how about I
was probably like seventeen eighteen and mind you paw holy.
Speaker 4 (13:14):
Ghosts, right, nah, you saund like somebody got things, not
somebody got.
Speaker 3 (13:36):
Anyways. I just remember I picked up like some random
book on Buddhism and I didn't even really get good
into it. And my mother's like, oh, so now you're
a Buddhist. Like, Noah, I don't even know what it is.
I just was trying to. Luckily, that shade didn't really
have an effect on me. I never became a Buddhist.
(13:58):
Probably didn't even finish the book. But you know, here
we are now here we are?
Speaker 2 (14:03):
Here we are now?
Speaker 1 (14:05):
When did that transition or what was the catalyst for
you even going forth past that shaming?
Speaker 2 (14:13):
Because a lot of people would just stop there.
Speaker 3 (14:15):
Oh man, I experienced so much shaming. I have some
funny stories. Okay, two thousand and nine, living in Brooklyn,
and my roommate love her tap dancer. She was going
to this church up in Westchester and it was this
church ran by this I think both of them were
from Aruba, but it was inside their house, right, and
(14:37):
so you gonna love this specific yes, So the girl
had really just come to Christianity. She didn't really get
raised in it. So she ended up at this church
because one of her friends was there, and so she
would be at the church ask him if what I
was doing as an astrologery and I just was like learning, studying,
reading books. I wouldn't even really like seeing clients or
(14:58):
anything like that. And they that it was witchcraft and
that we needed to get the witchcraft of the house.
So I go to the church with her first day.
Speaker 1 (15:07):
Wait wait, did she tell you that she had been
having these conversations?
Speaker 3 (15:12):
Yeah, but you know, it didn't it didn't connect. The
dots were so close, and I was like, huh, but
I think it's just exemplly of like being at that
point where I was still trying to sort out.
Speaker 2 (15:25):
Okay, you know, like my own spiritual and you was
even asking is right right?
Speaker 3 (15:31):
Right?
Speaker 5 (15:31):
Right? Right?
Speaker 2 (15:32):
Okay, fair right.
Speaker 3 (15:33):
So we get there and this one of them churches where,
oh god, man, I'm just pausing because the contradictions of
the way Christianity be trying to act like everyone else
is doing some like woo woo shit.
Speaker 2 (15:50):
Anyways, it's harmful and painful.
Speaker 3 (15:51):
It really is. So we get there and this one
of those churches where everybody like speaking in tongues and
it's just big praise and how did I like the whole?
That's the thing right, And so I'm just I grew
up like this, so it's not an unfeashore environment. But
a little time passes and one of like the leaders
is like you, you're the reason why the Holy Ghost
(16:13):
is not coming down you and your spirit of witchcraft
is wild? Yes, And I was like me, I like, now,
I'm like, wow, I'm so powerful at me. I did it,
I'm que And so I was really shook. She was like,
(16:33):
you gotta go home and you got to throw away
all them astrology books. And I did, but then I
went and got them out the trash.
Speaker 2 (16:40):
How long did it day for you to get them
out of the trash?
Speaker 3 (16:42):
Not too long, because you know when New York, you
gotta like your landlord come and they got to separate
all the trash before the thing come or else they're
gonna get by. So it was before the landlord came,
separated the trash, they got a little wet in the rain.
Maybe a couple of days did the.
Speaker 2 (16:56):
Roommate change up. I feel like after.
Speaker 3 (16:59):
That, now she was committed.
Speaker 2 (17:02):
She was not I saying, but did she change up
with you.
Speaker 3 (17:04):
No, she never really. She was never really judgmental of me.
But I did kind of hide my stuff, like I
see you a little bit too much in my business.
Love you girl, but my yours?
Speaker 2 (17:14):
What's sign? Was she?
Speaker 3 (17:17):
I don't know. That's a whole other conversation. Let's not
go there yet. Thank you, please, and thank you so much.
Speaker 2 (17:26):
Now do you do taro?
Speaker 3 (17:28):
I do? Taro? I interpret dreams. I can't just read
people without any of those things. Yeah, I'm just an
overall intuitive, sometimes psychic medium, master, astrologer, tarot reader, dream interpreter.
I do all of the things.
Speaker 1 (17:48):
And so did you have inklings of this when you
were a younger person.
Speaker 3 (17:53):
Yeah, I was dreaming, like four or five years old,
like dreaming. I had my first dream where I was
foreseeing something that would come to pass. I think in
fifth grade that was my first time. And then around
the time that I was like fourteen or fifteen, sitting
at church youth group and everybody's talking about their dreams
and like I'm just being flooded with like, Oh, that's
(18:15):
what that means, that's what that means, that's what that means.
And now that's like a thing that I can do.
But it was very much like for me, I grew
up with these stories of like Daniel being summoned by
nebek Nezzer to you know, interpret his dreams or you know,
all of these really mystical, improbable things happening. Being taught
(18:36):
that like the Word of God is a living word,
it's not dead and just written on pages, you know,
being taught that there is a time and a season
for all things on the earth and under the sun.
I took those things really literally, like, ah, yes, I
think they met them like only God knows, only Jesus knows,
and so the only way you're going to know any
of these things is if you give, baptize and surrender
(18:58):
your life to Jesus. And I was like not because
I just had a dream of the day that.
Speaker 2 (19:01):
Was like happening right now.
Speaker 3 (19:03):
It's like it's just here now, Like I just found
out your business. I don't even know you like that,
oh and I know your stuff because I just had
a dream. So how do you At some point, for me,
the very evident nature of my sight and my ability
to forekno, and then the way that I just took
(19:25):
to astrology, it was I really felt like this all
feels like remembering to me, it doesn't feel like I'm
discovering something. Yeah, So all of those things kind of
built up until the point I think for me as
a fellow neurodivergent person, I'm a sincere person, and I
(19:46):
genuinely like, if you say the Word of God is
a living word, I'm like, yes, it's a living and
I can hear it. If you say there's a time
and season for all things, and I'm able to make
these correlations in the chart and tell you exact what
time it is today in your life, and you'd be
like wow, Then now I'm like, oh no, this is literal.
This isn't just like manipulative language that's meant to like
(20:11):
make me submit my will and my better judgment and
discernment to some man in a suit on a pool pit.
Speaker 1 (20:19):
Have you seen folks use mysticism for their own version
of that?
Speaker 3 (20:24):
Yeah? Absolutely, if you go on TikTok all the time,
I don't really be on TikTok no more could stuck
with meggas. But if you go on TikTok all the time.
I used to get caught up watching these prophetic pastors
and they legit be prophesying and like doing medium shit mediumship. Oh,
I was like, yeah, mediumship from the poolpit and like
(20:48):
reading people down and like even growing up, you know,
those people would come through the church and they would
be prophesy A young sister in the yellow dress, come on,
stand up, come down to the altar, and da da
da dad. They tell all your business and know all
your big business. Right. And so I don't think that
mysticism and spiritual gifts are the territory exclusively of the
(21:08):
church or any organized religion. And I think that's like
another one of those misconceptions that mysticism inside the church,
it's perfectly okay. We can drink the blood, we can
eat the body, we can dip ourselves in water and
come up renewed. Yes, we can speak a language of tongues,
(21:31):
we can transcend, we can shout, we can leave our
bodies and have a transcendent spiritual experience. But as soon
as that happens outside of church, it's a misconception, even
though the only reason it's even in church is because
we bought it.
Speaker 2 (21:44):
There, right, right.
Speaker 1 (21:47):
So one of the things that really hit me about
Sinners was the juxtaposition of both the church and the mysticism,
and how both of them did have have relevant they
both had purpose in the story, but ultimately it was
the mysticism that ended.
Speaker 3 (22:07):
Up winning out allowed.
Speaker 2 (22:11):
But then they.
Speaker 1 (22:12):
Went in the wada and that also saves some Now
we're in spoiler alert.
Speaker 3 (22:17):
Yes sorry y'all.
Speaker 1 (22:18):
But by the time they see this, well, if you
haven't seen it yet, as your fault, right.
Speaker 2 (22:22):
But I really appreciated.
Speaker 1 (22:25):
The close strexupposition because I personally feel like we are
at a time.
Speaker 3 (22:31):
Amanda, go do it the only steer here, Since we.
Speaker 1 (22:39):
Are at a time where we have to be mystical,
we have to lean into that which is not right
in front of us, because it doesn't matter when it's
in front of us, we be ignoring it.
Speaker 2 (22:50):
Anyway, they wrote a whole manual.
Speaker 1 (22:51):
About what they was going to do, and then you're
still like wow, shocked, horrify. So so, ultimately, this is
also a very common evil that has existed and continues
to resurrect, and there is no reason to think that
it can be fought by simply just basic human I
(23:15):
don't like that behavior, No, I don't believe that. And
they are fueled by something that a lot of us
can't even relate to I cannot relate to their inhumanity.
I can't relate to their nefariousness. I cannot relate to
their dubiousness. It's hard for me to even wrap my
head around. Aside from just pattern recognition, I can't like
(23:38):
think like they think.
Speaker 2 (23:39):
I just don't.
Speaker 1 (23:40):
So I have to go the other direction and think
in ways that they don't think, and think in ways
that they can't think, and feel and exist and tap
in to networks of vibration that they don't have access to.
Speaker 2 (23:54):
And for me, that is where my missticism exists.
Speaker 1 (23:58):
Like my nipotence is in being tapped into a network
of sight that is bigger than mine.
Speaker 3 (24:08):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (24:08):
Like I feel like that's the reason why I can
see things and feel things, because I'm not just seeing
with my own eyes.
Speaker 3 (24:14):
Yeah yeah. James Cone and God of the Oppressed talks
about very early on in the book. He talks about like, basically,
there is no way that the God and Jesus that
white people are worshiping and praying to is the saying
God and Jesus that us black folks are praying to.
There's no way. I've also heard an anecdote of like,
(24:38):
when you go to a white church and they pray,
they're like, dear Lord, thank you for saving our souls.
Thank you for blessing us with the gift of salvation.
Allow us to remain holy and in your will Jesus Amen.
But when you go to a Black church, they be like, Lord,
you see us in our suffering. You see us or
(24:58):
are with us. You know in the valley, you are
with us, on the mountaintop, you are with us in
this grave danger that's hovering over us day by day.
But because of your grace, right, muddle on through, listen right, Like,
we're not having the same spiritual experience, We're not interfacing
with the same deity. And because of the narrowness of
(25:23):
English and the colonizer's language, we have lost the language
to even make those distinctions. But I think what this
moment of revival of African traditional religions and forms of
spirituality that's been going on for some time now, so
Sinners is kind of like a culmination of something that's
been happening for a while. It's giving us back the
(25:45):
language to be able to make those distinctions between the
spiritualities that have been forced upon us and what we
brought here. I think what Sinners does so well, it
shows how deeply they are intertwined. It's the vampire that's
baptizing him in that water like this mind blowing if
(26:07):
you really think about it. It's the vampire that's saying, hey,
it was us first in Ireland. They came and brought
that religion to us first, and it gave us comfort. Right,
But that's not my shit either. You know, I could
go on, but yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (26:28):
So when you are with your astrological gifts, well, first
of all, how do you even manage in this time?
Speaker 3 (26:35):
If it were not for my dreams, if it were
not for astrology, if it were not for my sight
and intuition, I wouldn't be alive. I have survived this
last five years of pandemic with and because of my
spiritual gifts, not only because it has allowed me to
make a living, but the inability to trust, not just
(27:02):
you know the day to day like oh am I
going to get sick or not? I mean like the
inability to trust the institutions and what I call hierarchies
of trust that are responsible for making sense of the
chaos in a way that serves the greater good. Like
you said, I have to rely on it. I have
to rely on it. It's the reason why I've been
(27:23):
able to sit in hold type for the past five
years and protect my son from everything that's going on,
with a heap of privilege, of course, with parents who
are supportive of me. But to be able to even
make that decision and have the foresight to say, Okay,
this ain't just the twenty twenty one thing or twenty
twenty twenty one, twenty two, to know this is going
to be going for a really long time, right, Like
(27:44):
even that comes from my work with Chinese astrology and
being able to tell when is COVID going to be
out there, when is it going to recede? How can
I calculate my movements and the safety of myself and
my son in light of that. It is woven into
the fabric of my waking and my sleeping every single
day of my life.
Speaker 2 (28:04):
You're such that when you first said son, I was like,
does she mean son?
Speaker 3 (28:08):
S in right? Right?
Speaker 5 (28:14):
Right?
Speaker 1 (28:14):
I have context, fool context fool context.
Speaker 3 (28:17):
And I listen, I mean I'll be seeing your brain like, Okay,
we're gonna take this literally. Nope, that's nope, wait, nope, no,
what's that? Okay? All right? Did I get it? Did
I understand it? Same girl.
Speaker 1 (28:32):
There's a lot of math happening in my brain of
like is very art too, happening very so thank you
for seeing this. So you very specifically denoted Chinese astrology,
and I don't even think most of us know the
difference and how that is demarketed, like the difference in
(28:53):
Chinese astrology versus like, what is even the astrology that
we be talking about when we say, somebody sign, what's that?
Speaker 2 (28:59):
Is that Roman astrology?
Speaker 3 (29:01):
No? Close? It is close, Yes, some would say Greek,
not necessarily Roman. So the tradition of astrology that has
permeated mainstream culture is a combination of things that come
from like Mesopotamia and that like Cradle of the Earth.
But Natal astrology, as we understand it, really started to
(29:23):
take form in both India and Greece. There was like
an exchange, so you'll know, Veda astrology one of the
longest unbroken traditions of astrological practice on Earth. Right, So
there is a somewhat European bent and cultural context from
which the astrology that most people are talking about comes
(29:44):
from Okay, Hellenistic astrology if anybody wants to look it up.
Is the name that one practitioner has given the origin
of the one that everybody knows now, Chinese astrology. Did
you see that post lacreded on threads? You're probably not
on threads, but it's been floating around. Did you see it.
Speaker 2 (30:03):
I've let go of threads quite some time ago.
Speaker 3 (30:05):
I don't even post on threads, but sometimes I be lurking.
But I think I saw it in somebody's story on Instagram,
and he was basically talking about how Sinners is anti
Christian and how exactly exactly they're just But this is
my point. This is my point, Amanda. He's going on
(30:25):
and on about how Sinners is anti Christian.
Speaker 2 (30:29):
That's an anti intellectual.
Speaker 3 (30:30):
Take my point precisely, because then he goes on to
call what anti practice voodoo?
Speaker 1 (30:38):
Right, So she literally says this is whodoo? She literally
says it, and then she this is this is why.
Speaker 3 (30:48):
Right, Like we can't even have a this.
Speaker 2 (30:54):
How how we go on? I'm sorry, I'm sorry. This
is the stuff that I'd be like in the shower,
just like what is gonna happen?
Speaker 3 (31:05):
How I have some thoughts about that as we get
further on, but I'll say this, he calls Whodo voodoo,
and like, this is the crux of it for me,
that like we can't even have a conversation about politics,
about spirituality or culture because the American population is so
(31:30):
deeply intellectually distorted by decades of very effective propaganda. Lecree
wants to make an educated statement about a film and
how it's representing spiritual practices, but he doesn't even know
enough about any other spiritual practice beside his own to
even call it the right name. And from that point forward,
(31:53):
I literally don't. I can't listen to anything they say. Right, So,
even with Chinese as strong, there are multiple forms of
side Chinese astrology. It's not just one. There is Baze,
which is what I know. There is keemun Ga I
think you call it, and there's one more that I
don't know. But there are multiple forms of Chinese astrology.
(32:14):
It's not just one system, which.
Speaker 1 (32:16):
Makes sense because China is massive. Before there were borderism after.
Speaker 3 (32:21):
Right, I mean, they've gone through their own forms of
internal border movements and dominations and wars that have consolidated
and fractured cultural lineages and things like that. But all
of that to say, in Chinese astrology, there are multiple astrologies.
The one that I'm most familiar with and that I
use to help me save my life and anybody else
(32:42):
who wants to hear it is Bazi. That's the one
that I use.
Speaker 1 (32:45):
So were I to get an astrological reading from you,
would it be via Baze No, unless you paid for that.
Speaker 3 (32:52):
Although I don't really offer those as a standalone service.
I offer that like with my clients who are trying
to conceive very helpful for that health issues, more broad
strokes because I don't know Chinese, so there's a language barrier,
but I know it enough to know some things. If
you come to me, what you're going to get is
(33:12):
a divination for liberation. Sidereal astrology reading break it on down,
very good. So sideial is one a technical term to
help us understand how do we calculate the zodiac? There's
the tropical zodiac and there's the sidereal zodiac that has
a lot of different minutes of calculations, different ones, but
the fundamental question is where's aries start? Where's zero areas?
(33:36):
That's the beginning of zodiac. How do we calculate that
point tropical zodiac or tropical astrology, which is what you
would be familiar with when you say what your signing is,
what's your sign? You would say, I'm.
Speaker 2 (33:46):
In cancer cancer virga.
Speaker 3 (33:47):
Cancer cancer virgal. So those are tropical calculations of the zodiac,
which basically says zero aries begins the moment of the
spring equinox in the northern hemisphere. Okay, in sidereal sideial
says that's cool. Okay, Actually zero arees is the point
(34:08):
one hundred degrees opposite fixed star Spica. Those two things
actually used to be the same.
Speaker 2 (34:15):
Fixed Starspeka on one hundred points, fixed star Spika.
Speaker 3 (34:18):
And the beginning of spring, meaning that.
Speaker 2 (34:20):
The yes yes, yes, yes.
Speaker 3 (34:23):
Right, meaning that the way ancients even knew it was
spring in part is because because this fixed star Spika
was setting or whatever rising in the sun was setting
or something like that, right, So that calculation difference, basically,
if you're familiar with the term precession of the equinoxes,
it's literally the equinox moving backwards through the zodiac. So
(34:43):
not being at zero aries right now, it's like, I
don't know, somewhere in Pisces, but what that means, basically,
is that there is a twenty four degree discrepancy between
the signs in tropical and the signs in sidereal. So
all of your stuff would move back wards.
Speaker 2 (35:01):
I mean, how do we gauge twenty four degrees?
Speaker 3 (35:04):
So every sign is thirty degrees equally thirty degrees? Right,
so you got zero, went to throop of five, six, seven, eight,
all the way through twenty nine degrees fifty nine minutes,
fifty nine seconds of art because we're talking about a circle, right,
So all of that is shyn To tell me I'm
not a cancer, I don't know. I would have to
pull up your chart. You might be still, I don't know,
(35:24):
but even that a man.
Speaker 2 (35:25):
Deep deep answer.
Speaker 3 (35:27):
Okay, but this is the thing.
Speaker 2 (35:28):
Well, let me just tell you this.
Speaker 3 (35:29):
Okay, go ahead, go ahead ahead.
Speaker 1 (35:30):
I've had several several from what I understand now, tropical yes, astrology,
astrology readings, and without fail, whether they know me or
don't know me, they're always like, you're exactly what your
chart says you are, says you are, Like there has
never been a oh that's odd ever, like there's always
(35:52):
more so that they're shocked at how very I'm like
living it.
Speaker 2 (35:56):
Out, yeah, yeah, yeah, in the whole color.
Speaker 1 (36:00):
And I had a reading earlier this year by someone
who didn't know me at all beyond the internets. Okay,
and she didn't even really know me by the internets
like that either. But it was also like even more
accurate than any other reading I'd ever had.
Speaker 3 (36:11):
Okay. When you say accurate, quantify that, like qualify that,
what is that experience like for that?
Speaker 1 (36:17):
Okay, I would say accurate in that she was referencing
things that she didn't know about that were very real.
So it's one thing to say you went through a
difficult time, right.
Speaker 3 (36:30):
Very generic.
Speaker 1 (36:31):
It's another thing to say you went through a time
where you were being discredited, or you went through a
time of deep solitude, or you went through a time
of isolate like you were being ostracized or isolated. And
she was like making references like that that in the
context that she was using them, and she just wouldn't
(36:53):
have known, but she was right, you know. And then
I would say accuracy also just in the like using
my chart to describe my person and my purpose and
my principles, and it was spot.
Speaker 3 (37:08):
On. Okay. Now I have my opinions about tropical astrology,
but I also know that there are people who use
it well. I am a patterned person and I need
things to be consistent and very logical. Like in my brain,
everything needs a container in category and it has to
fit every time. And it wasn't working that way with
(37:30):
me for tropical interests at all. I stay because years because,
for example, the boundaries between like what a planet is,
what a sign is, and what a house is we're
very blurry, so that sometimes they will be talking about
a sign, but then they were talking about a planet
and a house and I'm like, wait, no, which would
you have said?
Speaker 2 (37:48):
It was a planet though, right?
Speaker 3 (37:50):
So if you could help me out, tell me which
one it is? Right? So I'll say this. You kind
of highlighted one of the distinctions between my work and
how people generally experience astrology. And maybe there are people
who do it this way with tropical I don't know,
but I find broadly tropical astrology to be very prescriptive
(38:13):
in the sense of, this is who you are when
you come get a reading for me. My clients will
tell you. For example, I was just doing readings live
on Instagram a couple of days ago, and people just
give me their birth time. I saw in alignment. I say,
you have a history of breast cancer in your family,
and this is why can.
Speaker 2 (38:30):
We do that today?
Speaker 3 (38:31):
You want to?
Speaker 2 (38:32):
Yes, then let's do it. Growl Oh my gosh, let's
do it.
Speaker 3 (38:36):
You want me to pull it up now? Like, yeah,
let's do that. Okay, I'm gonna put me. Uh hold on, mom, mom,
I love it outside.
Speaker 2 (38:50):
Hold on, go always forget my birth time. Just pull
out my birth certificate right quick.
Speaker 3 (38:56):
But also ask your mother what she remembers. Ask her
what she remembers.
Speaker 1 (39:00):
Am I asking her specifically what she remembers about, just
as the third time?
Speaker 3 (39:04):
Yeah, just the time? What time was I born? What
time of day it was? Just to make sure that
it's you know what I'm saying, because sometimes, like Beyonce
released that birth certificate that is not her birth time.
She played in everybody's face. Did you see that? No,
there's a picture of her birth certificate in the Cowboy
Carter whatever book. That ain't her birth time. She's sitting
(39:26):
y'all on a blank mission. The most private person in
the universe. I play with me.
Speaker 2 (39:31):
On one second. Okay, So I was born at eleven
forty five, am Okay?
Speaker 3 (39:37):
What's the birthday?
Speaker 1 (39:38):
July first, nineteen eighty one, Inglewood, California.
Speaker 3 (39:42):
Did you say eleven forty nine?
Speaker 2 (39:43):
Eleven forty five?
Speaker 3 (39:45):
Okay, so disclaimer explanation up front. I read very differently
than what you're expecting. So I'm not about having.
Speaker 2 (39:56):
The expectations because you've already made it abundantly. Kid, you've
made that I have. No, I'm like, I'm here, I'm
just a receptor.
Speaker 1 (40:05):
All right, Well, we're gonna head into the Patreon only
section of this episode where you guys can hear the
rest of my reading, So let's do it.
Speaker 2 (40:15):
What's she gonna say? How am I not a cancer? Nah?
Speaker 1 (40:19):
Well it's not that I'm not a cancer. I'm just
not a cancer over there. Well, this all though, I mean, okay,
because we have we're short on time. I was already
gonna pay for a real reading anyway. I told you that,
mon Yeah yeah.
Speaker 3 (40:36):
Yeah yeah yeah. So anyways, that's that on that, no cancer.
Lots of mercury, lots of verbalizing, very meticulous in how
you communicate fear of being misunderstood, big, big, big thing.
Your feelings may be the most important thing to you,
but they don't come off that way. What comes off
is that what you know is the most important part
(40:57):
of who you are. That's why you have a podcast,
and you spend all your time telling people what you know.
You don't spend all your time talking about your feelings.
Speaker 2 (41:03):
You haven't heard this podcast.
Speaker 5 (41:06):
I'm talking about my feelings, and I hear all the
opinions are not feelings, No, but I talk about my
feelings like this upset me, this made me feel good,
This made me feel sad.
Speaker 3 (41:21):
No, no, no, that ain't it. That's not what I mean.
Speaker 2 (41:24):
What do you mean?
Speaker 3 (41:25):
I mean? My son is a person who has real cancer, Okay, right,
he's got cancer, moon and mercury. And when I say
his feelings are the most important part of who I am,
he loses the ability to communicate articulately all the time.
He goes mute because his emotions are so overwhelming. For you,
(41:47):
the more amped up and emotional you are, the more
words you have.
Speaker 1 (41:51):
You know why, though, Because because my feelings were being dismissed,
and so I had to find a way to community,
like I could have gone one of two ways. I
could have either gone the mute or I went the
You're just gonna hear me all the time.
Speaker 3 (42:06):
Right, And that's emotional labor that you're doing because people
are not making the attempt to understand you, just like
I don't did what I said, right, He can't do that.
He can't do that.
Speaker 1 (42:16):
But that's also I feel like also kind of in
the male thing. You think, yes, I do, because gender
is a social construct. But in this society that we're in,
I do feel like women expressing feelings is something we're
seeing all the time. Yeah, so even with the most
parenting that's there to encourage it, it's like that. But
I don't see it like that, you know, like it's
(42:36):
just not there. Whereas true, I was also seeing someone
like express their feelings all the time really love thum
thumt through but.
Speaker 3 (42:44):
She But let me let me say this last thing.
Having words for feelings is not the same as expressing feelings.
How come, because expressing feelings is about the effect that
you have on other people, regardless of the word words
that you use. I can express the feeling of sadness
by crying. I can express the feeling of sadness by
(43:05):
going in my room and closing the door. Oftentimes, when
I say I'm sad, people don't believe that I'm sad,
because if I was really sad, I would be doing
some other behavior that actually showed that I'm sad. And
I see that with you all the time. People don't
believe that you've actually been hurt, and people don't believe
that you actually have negatively been affected by something that
someone says and does to you. Because you're so good
(43:28):
at using words, it doesn't come off as emotional. It
comes off as intellectual communication of something that is emotional
for you.
Speaker 1 (43:35):
But that is me expressing my feelings, right, But in
the social construct of things you're saying, it doesn't mean
the same thing.
Speaker 3 (43:42):
No, they don't, and not even socially, a word for
something is not the same as the expression of something.
Speaker 1 (43:48):
Right, So for instance, like I remember one time I
was playing tennis with Devon, my ex, and he was
beating me like relentlessly, and I just was like so
upset about it, and I just like wasn't having fun
and because you were losing, yeah, and.
Speaker 2 (44:05):
But I was losing.
Speaker 1 (44:05):
Because I myself wasn't doing the best. Like it wasn't
about him. It was more like I'm angry with myself
because I keep messing up. But it was coming off
as anger when really what it was is more so
like a fear that I suck.
Speaker 2 (44:19):
Like that's really what it was.
Speaker 1 (44:21):
And so I had to stop myself because I like
worked myself up and I had to stop myself, and
I was like, I'm expressing anger, but I'm.
Speaker 2 (44:30):
Really like scared. That's why I'm mad. And then I
started crying.
Speaker 1 (44:37):
That's what happens in a house full of people trying
to figure it out.
Speaker 3 (44:40):
So that's a really interesting story. I'll have to file
that in my database.
Speaker 1 (44:45):
And I had only been able to do that because
at the time I had challenged him, like I was like,
we can't stay together unless you really do some emotional work,
like you need to be reading the workbook and going
to therapy, et cetera, et cetera, because I'm doing all
of the emotional labor of this relationship and I'm dying
like I can't.
Speaker 3 (45:05):
And people with water don't do emotional labor. I know
I'm breaking your brain, but like water doesn't have words,
you know what I mean, Like water is not words.
Water is I could say, yeah, and somebody is going
to come and figure out what's wrong with me, but
that didn't happen for you. You had to be like,
(45:26):
first you did X, and then you did why.
Speaker 1 (45:28):
But I only had to do that or else. But
I was going to continue to be harmed, Like I
don't know that.
Speaker 3 (45:33):
And that's a description of your environment that you were
born into and the way that you survived it.
Speaker 1 (45:38):
You see now, yeah, yeah, yeah, but I'm not going
to return all this cancer stuff.
Speaker 3 (45:44):
You could keep it, you could keep it. I'm gonna
telling you people be having the biggest identity crisis.
Speaker 1 (45:49):
Become tropical. I'm a tropical girl. I'm from Grenada.
Speaker 3 (45:58):
But to our original conversation around mysticism, perfect astrology is
a language that people are using to connect with one another.
And that's what makes what I do really hard because
I'm like, Na, Actually your worst fear is humiliation. And
I know you think Leo is like, Hi, everybody look
(46:19):
at me, right, but like you actually don't have that
type of personality at all. Like you're a performer, but
you don't have the everybody look at me. Leo is
being not an exhibitionist at all. Leo is very much
I hope that they don't see this thing that I'm
really insecure about. Please don't look at it. Don't look
at it. Don't look at it. Don't look at it. Please,
(46:41):
don't see it, don't call it out, don't name it.
And people are constantly doing it to you, especially often
as a way to like put you in your place.
Speaker 2 (46:50):
That's why it's used.
Speaker 3 (46:51):
Yeah, yeah, it's to put you in your place. It's like, oh,
let you don't see this and know this about yourself,
so let me tell you. And it's just like, now
you got to like, are y'all all seeing things that
I don't know about myself? Do I have to? Like?
All right, that's a vote for Leo for me. I'm
glad we figured that out. See now when I read
your chart, we don't have to go through all of that.
Speaker 2 (47:11):
Perfect.
Speaker 3 (47:11):
Let me ask you a question, Amanda. Yeah, how are
you feeling right now?
Speaker 2 (47:16):
How am I feeling right now? I am feeling.
Speaker 1 (47:21):
A little disoriented. Yeah, yeah, yeah, because it's a lot
of yeah, it's so so so, there's no anchor. No,
the meaning of everything is changing, bingo. And we are
almost exactly a year out from when I went through
(47:44):
like the biggest kind of identity shift of my life,
which was when I went through this whole ostracizing from
black media, by black media, from black Hollywood, and you know,
all this whole smear campaign around Amanda Sieals is unlikable, et.
Speaker 2 (47:58):
Cetera, et cetera.
Speaker 1 (47:59):
And so there was like all these articles that were
written that we're saying, you don't belong here because of
how you exist.
Speaker 2 (48:06):
It's not because of something I've done, but just because.
Speaker 3 (48:09):
Of how you are.
Speaker 2 (48:10):
Just it, that's it, just how you are.
Speaker 1 (48:12):
And in that process, I had to find my way
out of that, Like I had to cry my way
through it, I had to claw my way through it
in terms of deciding, well, where is my identity, where
does it really exist? Like yes, And so I think
there's also just like timing wise, like it's like literally.
Speaker 2 (48:35):
Almost to the day that all of that started, and I.
Speaker 3 (48:38):
Was about some astrology timing fair exactly.
Speaker 1 (48:43):
And then again, I feel like I'm on the verge
of being called to something higher and I just feel
like I'm having to really stabilize myself in what I
know of my guides, what I know of my principles,
(49:04):
my values, et cetera, to receive it.
Speaker 3 (49:07):
Yeah, No, that's really real. And I think one of
the languages that I've used is that We're in a
collective identity crisis and have been for some time, but
I think it's much more apparent right now, and it
distills down to the individual. I mean, one of the
big ways I see that is this whole thing with
like trans people, who are like one percent of the
population if that. But people are going through a whole
(49:30):
entire like losing their mind because it's like, oh my god,
if this trans person is a woman, what does that
make me? And it's like, why is it that your
identity has to be reference to someone else's That's the issue.
Speaker 1 (49:42):
It's the same with Zionists and Palestinians, right, It's like, oh,
my safety is attached to the harm of these people,
and if these people exist, then exist.
Speaker 3 (49:53):
Right. It's like, that's some real messed up math you're doing.
Can you show me the work on the board? Please
show it?
Speaker 2 (49:58):
Please? Where did you carry the Wand I don't think
you were supposed to carry the water over there?
Speaker 1 (50:04):
And I'm also seeing that just as black people in
the United States, And that's what you know, Sinners really
profoundly spoke to to me, was the concept of assimilation
as some form of liberation, And ultimately it is not.
You're assimilating into a burning house. You are assimilating into immorality.
So ultimately, what the liberation that you're looking for them?
(50:27):
People don't even have that liberation, so they can't give
it to you what they don't have. And when I
see a lot of black people trying to figure out
right now, is wait a minute, was the civil rights
move a really not a success?
Speaker 5 (50:40):
No?
Speaker 3 (50:40):
Okay, And we've been trying to tell you that the
past sixty years.
Speaker 1 (50:44):
We did not inherit freedom. We inherited a freedom fight.
And there are benchmarks that have brought us, you.
Speaker 3 (50:53):
Know, further along less suffering than previous generations.
Speaker 2 (50:57):
But it's like as the bar that low.
Speaker 1 (50:59):
Absolutely, and that's where I feel like the identity crisis
for black people and I find myself and you said
this in the reading. I am planning to go get
my PhD.
Speaker 3 (51:09):
Yeah, Jupiter's about to enter Gemini on May fourteenth and
go over your mercury Sun and Moon.
Speaker 2 (51:14):
I don't want to be known as Amanda the actress.
Speaker 3 (51:18):
Oh oh oh, yes, you are Leo Rising, because there
are eclipses there right now. And one of the things
that I say about these eclipses is whose vision determines
what you see when you look at Amanda Seals youth
in the mirror, Whose vision, whose eyes? Whose judgment is
shaping that? And you just said it. I don't want
to be known as Amanda Seals the actress because your
(51:42):
intellect and your knowledge and your ability to teach and
say the thing is the calling for you.
Speaker 2 (51:51):
Yes.
Speaker 1 (51:52):
Yeah, Like if that's on my obituary, I'm a haunt y'all.
That's so real. I love this so much. I want
that by the time I leave this earth. They're like,
remember she was on that TV show, Like that's what
I want. Remember when she Remember when, remember back then
when she was Because I feel like I am here
(52:17):
to help usher us and I feel like this is
what every time I come back. I'm here to help
usher us to the next and I feel very called
right now to be Like my guide showed up the
other day and we're like, you can't leave.
Speaker 2 (52:30):
Like a lot of my friends are like, we're moving
to this place. We're moving to this place, like we're
escaping the United States. And my guys were.
Speaker 1 (52:35):
Like, not you, sorry, boo, You're supposed to be here.
And my mom was like, you can't run. You can't run.
Speaker 3 (52:43):
The thing that ostracizes you is your calling.
Speaker 2 (52:46):
I know.
Speaker 1 (52:47):
That's why it's so freaking annoying because I'm Cassandra.
Speaker 3 (52:51):
But it's also like, when that whole thing was going
on for you, the thing that I kept thinking about
was I was like, Amanda has to choose between belonging
and authenticity, and.
Speaker 2 (53:02):
I chose authenticity.
Speaker 3 (53:03):
Yeah, And the cost of that is that people are
not going to when you choose your authentic self. It
magnifies how inauthentic people are. But they don't but they
don't know that they're being inauthentic. They don't know it.
That's not what they call it. It's such a conundrum,
you know. I wanted to say one more thing you
(53:24):
talked about, like freedom and liberation, and this is something
that I think about a lot in that I see
freedom as a personal alleviation of my struggles. Freedom is
a better job. Freedom is ooh, I got my free papers.
Freedom is right my bills are paid. Freedom is I
work for myself. Liberation is collective freedom. As long as
(53:49):
anybody's healthcare is tied to their employment, whatever good stuff
I got going on is in danger as long as
any person is deprived of self determination and the right
to do process. I am in danger. I don't care
if you don't identify as an immigrant, a trans person,
a protester, a Palestinian. That's where they get you. You
(54:13):
think that because you don't fall into that category, you're safe,
but you're not.
Speaker 4 (54:17):
So.
Speaker 3 (54:18):
Liberation is a group project that we have to yeah,
that we have to imagine together. And to your point
about the identity crisis of black people, black people are like, yeah,
I'm sorry, your little DEEI thing at Target was great
for you. And look how quickly they snatch that away
because that wasn't liberation. That was a temporary set of circumstances.
Speaker 1 (54:41):
Boycott everyone but me that bless their hearts, because ultimately
that's in doctrination, that's what that is. I couldn't even
I just was. I say, you know, this is why
we got work to do.
Speaker 3 (54:57):
We do and you're gonna do it, girl, We do it.
Speaker 2 (55:10):
The last.
Speaker 1 (55:16):
Thank you so much for this insight and for not
only just talking about it, but then demonstrating for folks
in reality a misconception of mysticism. So many of us
have never heard of this other side of astrology. We
didn't know that I was a Leo Rising, which I
will have a very hard time accepting.
Speaker 3 (55:34):
But that's okay. Just don't go looking on the internet
and look up Leo because that's never going to be
this right.
Speaker 2 (55:41):
It's not what I'm saying, it's not what you're saying.
Speaker 1 (55:43):
But I hope for y'all this helps to illuminate for
you that the misunderstanding around mysticism is deeply grounded, rooted,
just founded in a lack of curiosity, and that lack
of curiosity was supplanted by those who just don't want
(56:03):
you to know.
Speaker 2 (56:05):
To make you give up what's yours because you knowing
anything other than what they've given you to know they
consider to be a threat.
Speaker 3 (56:14):
If you don't have this book right here, Decolonizing the Mind,
the politics of language in African literature. He's talking about
in some ways this topic, you might find it very interesting.
Speaker 1 (56:25):
Well, you know, I am a Gemini, Gemini Gemini.
Speaker 2 (56:32):
This has been lovely. Thank you, so so much.
Speaker 3 (56:34):
Thank you, Amanda. I really appreciate the conversations today, do
you too,
Small Dud help from Small Area Small. It's so funky,
So welcome to small those this podcast. I hope that
those of you who just listen to the podcast are
(00:24):
not scared by this title, because I know that we
definitely have a lot of you know, religious believers that
listen to this podcast, and I don't want to scare
you away because this episode is at some times going
to be I would say, a bit challenging, but I
hope that you'll push yourself because there is no goal
(00:45):
of disregard or disrespect for your belief system happening in
this episode. Side effects of the misrepresentation of mysticism. The conversation,
though requires reference to namely Christianity, because the misrepresentation of
missis in the United States is directly related to Christianity
(01:05):
positioning mysticism that was traveled here by the people they
stole as the occult. It actively dissolved and disassociated people
with what they were grounded in so that they could
more easily control them. They did the same thing to
the Native American people here in this nation. And so
(01:26):
we're talking about within this conversation, it's not the whole conversation,
but we're talking about the necessity to call that out,
because we can have both. You can believe in what
you believe in while not chatting on what someone else
believes in, particularly if your shattery is attached to oppressors
(01:48):
bringing this to you through the lens of their own
interpretation of the Bible. Our guest today is somebody who
I came across on these instagrams, and I'm gonna definitely
tell her how I pretty much.
Speaker 2 (02:05):
I appreciate her thought process.
Speaker 1 (02:07):
But one of the things that I love about having
this podcast is that I just get to interview and
talk to so many different people from so many walks
of life that still managed to land in similar vibrations
and in similar trajectories of thought. And that lets me
know that I ain't bugging, and it lets me know
y'all ain't bugging, and also keeps the hope alive.
Speaker 2 (02:28):
It also helps to fight off.
Speaker 1 (02:30):
The nihilism that everything's gone to shit, right. I know
that now more than ever, we really need that here
in the United States. For everyone who's not in the
United States that's listening. I'm actually curious how this episode relates,
particularly to you and how mysticism exists within your social sphere,
because here it is very often seen as something that
(02:54):
like weirdos are a part of. It's definitely sequestered in
this mind state of oh, that's what those people do,
not regular people like us, that's what those people do.
But yet people love astrology, right, People love wishing when
they throw a penny in a fountain, okay.
Speaker 2 (03:15):
Or when they blow out candles, and so.
Speaker 1 (03:18):
The reality that magic and the hope of things being
realized and manifested will happen is not solely attached to
the occult.
Speaker 2 (03:31):
Okay.
Speaker 1 (03:33):
And I'm really excited for this conversation because this is
somebody who takes her work incredibly seriously and who has
been really creative and innovative with their work in such
a manner that I feel like only black women can do.
So we're here for side effects of the misrepresentation of mysticism.
Speaker 2 (03:55):
We are here with Daniel and Knuckles, the.
Speaker 1 (03:58):
Oracle, that's supposed oracle, the people's oracle. It is a
strong statement as an instagram name.
Speaker 3 (04:07):
It really is. It is, it is.
Speaker 2 (04:10):
Where was this born from? Okay?
Speaker 3 (04:13):
Real talk? A person whose name in gendershell remain unnamed.
Very early on in my astrological interest and studies. I
would just be like, hmm, this looks like this is
going to happen and this is here, and that person
started calling me the oracle like very jokingly, very like.
Speaker 2 (04:31):
Ha ha ha.
Speaker 3 (04:32):
But then time passed and the stars aligned for me
to begin this iteration of my work, and it literally
does dropped in my spirit like that the people's oracle.
I was like, that's good. And I have a knack
for coming up with names anyway, but that one that
came my big one.
Speaker 1 (04:52):
All right, listen, we thank them, appreciate it, thank you well.
I So, by the way, I got a light scolding
from Dana, just a light scolding from Dana when I
began following her, because then I joined a live and
you were like, I don't know what took me in
(05:13):
to seel so long, because we've been saying the same thing.
Speaker 2 (05:16):
And it was not like that, like the algorithm didn't
bring me tell you my plot. They were trying to
keep us apart.
Speaker 3 (05:25):
It was truly truly a conspiracy, I'm convinced.
Speaker 1 (05:29):
So the way that I found my way to Dana
lin Knuckles was somehow you came across my algorithm path
when I was still on Instagram, speaking honestly and definitively
about Democrats in a way that I really have only
seen myself speak about. As far as black women, I
(05:50):
feel like I see black men all the time, but
you were the only black.
Speaker 2 (05:55):
Women at that point that I saw being like.
Speaker 1 (05:59):
Hello, op, because it was I mean, I was really
attacked for I didn't even say that.
Speaker 2 (06:08):
I was just like she.
Speaker 1 (06:11):
She's not enough, like there has to be more, and
you said the same. So I just want to thank
you in public because I thank you on DM, but
I want to thank you actually know what I actually
reposted you and was like you.
Speaker 3 (06:24):
Said you did you did appreciate that. I appreciate that,
a little amplification for your girl over.
Speaker 2 (06:30):
Here, amplification.
Speaker 1 (06:32):
And so then I was looking further and I saw
that you live in New Orleans and that you are,
you know, an astrologer, and that you're somebody who's tapped
in deeper than just like on the page, but in spirit.
And so that's where we came to this topic of
side effects of misrepresentation of mysticism. And this isn't really
(06:55):
an interview, it's a conversation. So you can ask me things,
I can ask you things. I just want to make
that a parent because as of late, it's been very
top of mine because I had seen Sinners, and I
saw a lot of people saying they didn't want to
go see Sinners because they were like, it's the occult,
it's the devil, it's vampires.
Speaker 3 (07:13):
And I'm while y'all drinking blood and body calling it Jesus. Okay,
I'm just saying.
Speaker 1 (07:24):
I'm just saying, I'm not even shading that you're doing that.
Speaker 2 (07:28):
I'm just shading the hypocrisy of it, you know.
Speaker 1 (07:32):
So I would love to just hear where does mysticism
exist in your world on a daily basis? Because New
Orleans is a unique experience.
Speaker 3 (07:42):
So I'm actually originally from Chicago. That is where I
was raised, spent my whole life, and I grew up
in what many of your listeners may have never heard of,
which is the Pentecostal assemblies of the world.
Speaker 2 (07:55):
Okay, put me on.
Speaker 3 (07:57):
And in this particular so this particular denomination split off
from like so you got the Kojaks and then you
got the paw like they split off, Okay, and they
split off because the Kojaks were like you got to
get baptized in the name of the Father, the Son,
and the Holy ghosts. And the paw was like, no,
you just get baptized in the name of Jesus. Ridiculous, right, I.
Speaker 2 (08:17):
Was like, oh, okay, okay, yeah, very vulous.
Speaker 3 (08:20):
But anyways, so like my spiritual upbringing was, if you
die and you ain't been water baptized in the name
of Jesus terry for the Holy Ghost with evidence of
speaking in tongues, you're going to go to Hell. Oh right,
So all of that that was really what it was.
(08:40):
That was my Black Church experience. However, Okay, I don't
have no hard feelings about it. Okay, I don't because
I would not be doing what I do now if
I had not. I call that my spiritual initiation, okay. Right.
It doesn't always come in a form that is congruent
with your present day beliefs, but does give you that
(09:01):
opening into mysticism that gives you some language or an
idea that, like, not everything is what it appears to
be right, and that there is an order of some
kind that is behind what seems like surface chance and chaos. Now,
what you want to call that order is up to you.
But I think that's kind of what the core of
(09:23):
mysticism is that there's like an order, there's something beneath
the surface, beyond the face value. Yes, right, there's a
pattern somewhere. And you could call it Jesus, you could
call it who do, You could call it Vodom, you
can call it Santaio, Condablo. Whatever.
Speaker 1 (09:40):
Well, let's talk about that, because there's so much connotation
that has been applied by colonizers to.
Speaker 2 (09:49):
The mystical work of folks from the.
Speaker 1 (09:51):
Continents who have been disseminated throughout the Americas, right, And
it's all those things that you just named, And what
would you say, is like the primary miss representation that
you've witnessed in mysticism?
Speaker 2 (10:08):
Ooh oh, it's the first one that comes to mind.
Speaker 3 (10:13):
Oh man.
Speaker 2 (10:14):
I mean like, I went on.
Speaker 1 (10:16):
A date with Nick Cannon once and he was like,
I don't want my children to ever read Harry Potter.
Speaker 2 (10:23):
This is before Mariah, this before the kids.
Speaker 1 (10:25):
I don't want my children to ever read Harry Potter
because it's the devil.
Speaker 2 (10:28):
It's about the devil. And I was just like, I
don't think so. And I said, well, what else is
the devil? And he was like voodoo? Oh, And I
wonder what he would say about that now.
Speaker 1 (10:41):
But which is you know what I'm saying, But it
speaks to how you were like, you know, people kind
of go through these processes, and so that was an
example of a misrepresentation. I feel like people are constantly
I've constantly heard voodoo represented as like, oh, that's the devil,
it's dark magic, it's dark works, it's devil work.
Speaker 3 (10:58):
Yeah, I would say that. Hmm, what is the first
thing that comes to mind? Oh, that's what came to
my mind. Have you ever seen this show foundation? Yes,
Apple Beat? Okay, So the Sinax people, right, which is
like the black yes, right, the black planet.
Speaker 2 (11:18):
So to speak, right, the desert, the one where they're walking.
Speaker 3 (11:21):
Oh no, no, no, Sinx is the one where the
girl came from what's her name. I'm just with the water, yes,
the water okay, right, and they're flooded. So they're like
having a climate catastrophe, right, Yeah, their whole religion is
like the reason why we have in this climate catastrophe
is because y'all read books and so.
Speaker 1 (11:45):
Taking me back because I forgot you know, that was
one of them shows where I dedicated myself and then
realized at the end, it was still a white Savior
show and I was like.
Speaker 2 (11:52):
Ah, that threw me off.
Speaker 3 (11:55):
And then of course there's like that scene where there's
a terrorist attack on Trenton and why they got to
make it sound like they're speaking Arabic like you guys
can't help but to be racist. It is.
Speaker 2 (12:06):
It's really not. They don't know how not.
Speaker 3 (12:09):
To be truly, it's inborn. So anyways, on sinex though,
the whole, like religion and culture, is around how curiosity
is a sin, yes, right, yes, seeking knowledge in books
like the university has flooded and it's off limits and
you will become a heretic and excommunicated and drowned if
(12:33):
you're caught with books and reading. And I feel like,
like to me, that is exemplary of how mysticism is misrepresented,
the idea that you can even be curious about something
other than Christianity, Judaism, Islam and even Islam. I know, right,
Like once you veer outside of that, it's the devil
(12:58):
and it's evil.
Speaker 1 (12:59):
Yes, yes, anything outside of there's no spectrum.
Speaker 3 (13:04):
No, it's very black and white, it's very black and white.
I remember when I was a kid, how about I
was probably like seventeen eighteen and mind you paw holy.
Speaker 4 (13:14):
Ghosts, right, nah, you saund like somebody got things, not
somebody got.
Speaker 3 (13:36):
Anyways. I just remember I picked up like some random
book on Buddhism and I didn't even really get good
into it. And my mother's like, oh, so now you're
a Buddhist. Like, Noah, I don't even know what it is.
I just was trying to. Luckily, that shade didn't really
have an effect on me. I never became a Buddhist.
(13:58):
Probably didn't even finish the book. But you know, here
we are now here we are?
Speaker 2 (14:03):
Here we are now?
Speaker 1 (14:05):
When did that transition or what was the catalyst for
you even going forth past that shaming?
Speaker 2 (14:13):
Because a lot of people would just stop there.
Speaker 3 (14:15):
Oh man, I experienced so much shaming. I have some
funny stories. Okay, two thousand and nine, living in Brooklyn,
and my roommate love her tap dancer. She was going
to this church up in Westchester and it was this
church ran by this I think both of them were
from Aruba, but it was inside their house, right, and
(14:37):
so you gonna love this specific yes, So the girl
had really just come to Christianity. She didn't really get
raised in it. So she ended up at this church
because one of her friends was there, and so she
would be at the church ask him if what I
was doing as an astrologery and I just was like learning, studying,
reading books. I wouldn't even really like seeing clients or
(14:58):
anything like that. And they that it was witchcraft and
that we needed to get the witchcraft of the house.
So I go to the church with her first day.
Speaker 1 (15:07):
Wait wait, did she tell you that she had been
having these conversations?
Speaker 3 (15:12):
Yeah, but you know, it didn't it didn't connect. The
dots were so close, and I was like, huh, but
I think it's just exemplly of like being at that
point where I was still trying to sort out.
Speaker 2 (15:25):
Okay, you know, like my own spiritual and you was
even asking is right right?
Speaker 3 (15:31):
Right?
Speaker 5 (15:31):
Right? Right?
Speaker 2 (15:32):
Okay, fair right.
Speaker 3 (15:33):
So we get there and this one of them churches where,
oh god, man, I'm just pausing because the contradictions of
the way Christianity be trying to act like everyone else
is doing some like woo woo shit.
Speaker 2 (15:50):
Anyways, it's harmful and painful.
Speaker 3 (15:51):
It really is. So we get there and this one
of those churches where everybody like speaking in tongues and
it's just big praise and how did I like the whole?
That's the thing right, And so I'm just I grew
up like this, so it's not an unfeashore environment. But
a little time passes and one of like the leaders
is like you, you're the reason why the Holy Ghost
(16:13):
is not coming down you and your spirit of witchcraft
is wild? Yes, And I was like me, I like, now,
I'm like, wow, I'm so powerful at me. I did it,
I'm que And so I was really shook. She was like,
(16:33):
you gotta go home and you got to throw away
all them astrology books. And I did, but then I
went and got them out the trash.
Speaker 2 (16:40):
How long did it day for you to get them
out of the trash?
Speaker 3 (16:42):
Not too long, because you know when New York, you
gotta like your landlord come and they got to separate
all the trash before the thing come or else they're
gonna get by. So it was before the landlord came,
separated the trash, they got a little wet in the rain.
Maybe a couple of days did the.
Speaker 2 (16:56):
Roommate change up. I feel like after.
Speaker 3 (16:59):
That, now she was committed.
Speaker 2 (17:02):
She was not I saying, but did she change up
with you.
Speaker 3 (17:04):
No, she never really. She was never really judgmental of me.
But I did kind of hide my stuff, like I
see you a little bit too much in my business.
Love you girl, but my yours?
Speaker 2 (17:14):
What's sign? Was she?
Speaker 3 (17:17):
I don't know. That's a whole other conversation. Let's not
go there yet. Thank you, please, and thank you so much.
Speaker 2 (17:26):
Now do you do taro?
Speaker 3 (17:28):
I do? Taro? I interpret dreams. I can't just read
people without any of those things. Yeah, I'm just an
overall intuitive, sometimes psychic medium, master, astrologer, tarot reader, dream interpreter.
I do all of the things.
Speaker 1 (17:48):
And so did you have inklings of this when you
were a younger person.
Speaker 3 (17:53):
Yeah, I was dreaming, like four or five years old,
like dreaming. I had my first dream where I was
foreseeing something that would come to pass. I think in
fifth grade that was my first time. And then around
the time that I was like fourteen or fifteen, sitting
at church youth group and everybody's talking about their dreams
and like I'm just being flooded with like, Oh, that's
(18:15):
what that means, that's what that means, that's what that means.
And now that's like a thing that I can do.
But it was very much like for me, I grew
up with these stories of like Daniel being summoned by
nebek Nezzer to you know, interpret his dreams or you know,
all of these really mystical, improbable things happening. Being taught
(18:36):
that like the Word of God is a living word,
it's not dead and just written on pages, you know,
being taught that there is a time and a season
for all things on the earth and under the sun.
I took those things really literally, like, ah, yes, I
think they met them like only God knows, only Jesus knows,
and so the only way you're going to know any
of these things is if you give, baptize and surrender
(18:58):
your life to Jesus. And I was like not because
I just had a dream of the day that.
Speaker 2 (19:01):
Was like happening right now.
Speaker 3 (19:03):
It's like it's just here now, Like I just found
out your business. I don't even know you like that,
oh and I know your stuff because I just had
a dream. So how do you At some point, for me,
the very evident nature of my sight and my ability
to forekno, and then the way that I just took
(19:25):
to astrology, it was I really felt like this all
feels like remembering to me, it doesn't feel like I'm
discovering something. Yeah, So all of those things kind of
built up until the point I think for me as
a fellow neurodivergent person, I'm a sincere person, and I
(19:46):
genuinely like, if you say the Word of God is
a living word, I'm like, yes, it's a living and
I can hear it. If you say there's a time
and season for all things, and I'm able to make
these correlations in the chart and tell you exact what
time it is today in your life, and you'd be
like wow, Then now I'm like, oh no, this is literal.
This isn't just like manipulative language that's meant to like
(20:11):
make me submit my will and my better judgment and
discernment to some man in a suit on a pool pit.
Speaker 1 (20:19):
Have you seen folks use mysticism for their own version
of that?
Speaker 3 (20:24):
Yeah? Absolutely, if you go on TikTok all the time,
I don't really be on TikTok no more could stuck
with meggas. But if you go on TikTok all the time.
I used to get caught up watching these prophetic pastors
and they legit be prophesying and like doing medium shit mediumship. Oh,
I was like, yeah, mediumship from the poolpit and like
(20:48):
reading people down and like even growing up, you know,
those people would come through the church and they would
be prophesy A young sister in the yellow dress, come on,
stand up, come down to the altar, and da da
da dad. They tell all your business and know all
your big business. Right. And so I don't think that
mysticism and spiritual gifts are the territory exclusively of the
(21:08):
church or any organized religion. And I think that's like
another one of those misconceptions that mysticism inside the church,
it's perfectly okay. We can drink the blood, we can
eat the body, we can dip ourselves in water and
come up renewed. Yes, we can speak a language of tongues,
(21:31):
we can transcend, we can shout, we can leave our
bodies and have a transcendent spiritual experience. But as soon
as that happens outside of church, it's a misconception, even
though the only reason it's even in church is because
we bought it.
Speaker 2 (21:44):
There, right, right.
Speaker 1 (21:47):
So one of the things that really hit me about
Sinners was the juxtaposition of both the church and the mysticism,
and how both of them did have have relevant they
both had purpose in the story, but ultimately it was
the mysticism that ended.
Speaker 3 (22:07):
Up winning out allowed.
Speaker 2 (22:11):
But then they.
Speaker 1 (22:12):
Went in the wada and that also saves some Now
we're in spoiler alert.
Speaker 3 (22:17):
Yes sorry y'all.
Speaker 1 (22:18):
But by the time they see this, well, if you
haven't seen it yet, as your fault, right.
Speaker 2 (22:22):
But I really appreciated.
Speaker 1 (22:25):
The close strexupposition because I personally feel like we are
at a time.
Speaker 3 (22:31):
Amanda, go do it the only steer here, Since we.
Speaker 1 (22:39):
Are at a time where we have to be mystical,
we have to lean into that which is not right
in front of us, because it doesn't matter when it's
in front of us, we be ignoring it.
Speaker 2 (22:50):
Anyway, they wrote a whole manual.
Speaker 1 (22:51):
About what they was going to do, and then you're
still like wow, shocked, horrify. So so, ultimately, this is
also a very common evil that has existed and continues
to resurrect, and there is no reason to think that
it can be fought by simply just basic human I
(23:15):
don't like that behavior, No, I don't believe that. And
they are fueled by something that a lot of us
can't even relate to I cannot relate to their inhumanity.
I can't relate to their nefariousness. I cannot relate to
their dubiousness. It's hard for me to even wrap my
head around. Aside from just pattern recognition, I can't like
(23:38):
think like they think.
Speaker 2 (23:39):
I just don't.
Speaker 1 (23:40):
So I have to go the other direction and think
in ways that they don't think, and think in ways
that they can't think, and feel and exist and tap
in to networks of vibration that they don't have access to.
Speaker 2 (23:54):
And for me, that is where my missticism exists.
Speaker 1 (23:58):
Like my nipotence is in being tapped into a network
of sight that is bigger than mine.
Speaker 3 (24:08):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (24:08):
Like I feel like that's the reason why I can
see things and feel things, because I'm not just seeing
with my own eyes.
Speaker 3 (24:14):
Yeah yeah. James Cone and God of the Oppressed talks
about very early on in the book. He talks about like, basically,
there is no way that the God and Jesus that
white people are worshiping and praying to is the saying
God and Jesus that us black folks are praying to.
There's no way. I've also heard an anecdote of like,
(24:38):
when you go to a white church and they pray,
they're like, dear Lord, thank you for saving our souls.
Thank you for blessing us with the gift of salvation.
Allow us to remain holy and in your will Jesus Amen.
But when you go to a Black church, they be like, Lord,
you see us in our suffering. You see us or
(24:58):
are with us. You know in the valley, you are
with us, on the mountaintop, you are with us in
this grave danger that's hovering over us day by day.
But because of your grace, right, muddle on through, listen right, Like,
we're not having the same spiritual experience, We're not interfacing
with the same deity. And because of the narrowness of
(25:23):
English and the colonizer's language, we have lost the language
to even make those distinctions. But I think what this
moment of revival of African traditional religions and forms of
spirituality that's been going on for some time now, so
Sinners is kind of like a culmination of something that's
been happening for a while. It's giving us back the
(25:45):
language to be able to make those distinctions between the
spiritualities that have been forced upon us and what we
brought here. I think what Sinners does so well, it
shows how deeply they are intertwined. It's the vampire that's
baptizing him in that water like this mind blowing if
(26:07):
you really think about it. It's the vampire that's saying, hey,
it was us first in Ireland. They came and brought
that religion to us first, and it gave us comfort. Right,
But that's not my shit either. You know, I could
go on, but yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (26:28):
So when you are with your astrological gifts, well, first
of all, how do you even manage in this time?
Speaker 3 (26:35):
If it were not for my dreams, if it were
not for astrology, if it were not for my sight
and intuition, I wouldn't be alive. I have survived this
last five years of pandemic with and because of my
spiritual gifts, not only because it has allowed me to
make a living, but the inability to trust, not just
(27:02):
you know the day to day like oh am I
going to get sick or not? I mean like the
inability to trust the institutions and what I call hierarchies
of trust that are responsible for making sense of the
chaos in a way that serves the greater good. Like
you said, I have to rely on it. I have
to rely on it. It's the reason why I've been
(27:23):
able to sit in hold type for the past five
years and protect my son from everything that's going on,
with a heap of privilege, of course, with parents who
are supportive of me. But to be able to even
make that decision and have the foresight to say, Okay,
this ain't just the twenty twenty one thing or twenty
twenty twenty one, twenty two, to know this is going
to be going for a really long time, right, Like
(27:44):
even that comes from my work with Chinese astrology and
being able to tell when is COVID going to be
out there, when is it going to recede? How can
I calculate my movements and the safety of myself and
my son in light of that. It is woven into
the fabric of my waking and my sleeping every single
day of my life.
Speaker 2 (28:04):
You're such that when you first said son, I was like,
does she mean son?
Speaker 3 (28:08):
S in right? Right?
Speaker 5 (28:14):
Right?
Speaker 1 (28:14):
I have context, fool context fool context.
Speaker 3 (28:17):
And I listen, I mean I'll be seeing your brain like, Okay,
we're gonna take this literally. Nope, that's nope, wait, nope, no,
what's that? Okay? All right? Did I get it? Did
I understand it? Same girl.
Speaker 1 (28:32):
There's a lot of math happening in my brain of
like is very art too, happening very so thank you
for seeing this. So you very specifically denoted Chinese astrology,
and I don't even think most of us know the
difference and how that is demarketed, like the difference in
(28:53):
Chinese astrology versus like, what is even the astrology that
we be talking about when we say, somebody sign, what's that?
Speaker 2 (28:59):
Is that Roman astrology?
Speaker 3 (29:01):
No? Close? It is close, Yes, some would say Greek,
not necessarily Roman. So the tradition of astrology that has
permeated mainstream culture is a combination of things that come
from like Mesopotamia and that like Cradle of the Earth.
But Natal astrology, as we understand it, really started to
(29:23):
take form in both India and Greece. There was like
an exchange, so you'll know, Veda astrology one of the
longest unbroken traditions of astrological practice on Earth. Right, So
there is a somewhat European bent and cultural context from
which the astrology that most people are talking about comes
(29:44):
from Okay, Hellenistic astrology if anybody wants to look it up.
Is the name that one practitioner has given the origin
of the one that everybody knows now, Chinese astrology. Did
you see that post lacreded on threads? You're probably not
on threads, but it's been floating around. Did you see it.
Speaker 2 (30:03):
I've let go of threads quite some time ago.
Speaker 3 (30:05):
I don't even post on threads, but sometimes I be lurking.
But I think I saw it in somebody's story on Instagram,
and he was basically talking about how Sinners is anti
Christian and how exactly exactly they're just But this is
my point. This is my point, Amanda. He's going on
(30:25):
and on about how Sinners is anti Christian.
Speaker 2 (30:29):
That's an anti intellectual.
Speaker 3 (30:30):
Take my point precisely, because then he goes on to
call what anti practice voodoo?
Speaker 1 (30:38):
Right, So she literally says this is whodoo? She literally
says it, and then she this is this is why.
Speaker 3 (30:48):
Right, Like we can't even have a this.
Speaker 2 (30:54):
How how we go on? I'm sorry, I'm sorry. This
is the stuff that I'd be like in the shower,
just like what is gonna happen?
Speaker 3 (31:05):
How I have some thoughts about that as we get
further on, but I'll say this, he calls Whodo voodoo,
and like, this is the crux of it for me,
that like we can't even have a conversation about politics,
about spirituality or culture because the American population is so
(31:30):
deeply intellectually distorted by decades of very effective propaganda. Lecree
wants to make an educated statement about a film and
how it's representing spiritual practices, but he doesn't even know
enough about any other spiritual practice beside his own to
even call it the right name. And from that point forward,
(31:53):
I literally don't. I can't listen to anything they say. Right, So,
even with Chinese as strong, there are multiple forms of
side Chinese astrology. It's not just one. There is Baze,
which is what I know. There is keemun Ga I
think you call it, and there's one more that I
don't know. But there are multiple forms of Chinese astrology.
(32:14):
It's not just one system, which.
Speaker 1 (32:16):
Makes sense because China is massive. Before there were borderism after.
Speaker 3 (32:21):
Right, I mean, they've gone through their own forms of
internal border movements and dominations and wars that have consolidated
and fractured cultural lineages and things like that. But all
of that to say, in Chinese astrology, there are multiple astrologies.
The one that I'm most familiar with and that I
use to help me save my life and anybody else
(32:42):
who wants to hear it is Bazi. That's the one
that I use.
Speaker 1 (32:45):
So were I to get an astrological reading from you,
would it be via Baze No, unless you paid for that.
Speaker 3 (32:52):
Although I don't really offer those as a standalone service.
I offer that like with my clients who are trying
to conceive very helpful for that health issues, more broad
strokes because I don't know Chinese, so there's a language barrier,
but I know it enough to know some things. If
you come to me, what you're going to get is
(33:12):
a divination for liberation. Sidereal astrology reading break it on down,
very good. So sideial is one a technical term to
help us understand how do we calculate the zodiac? There's
the tropical zodiac and there's the sidereal zodiac that has
a lot of different minutes of calculations, different ones, but
the fundamental question is where's aries start? Where's zero areas?
(33:36):
That's the beginning of zodiac. How do we calculate that
point tropical zodiac or tropical astrology, which is what you
would be familiar with when you say what your signing is,
what's your sign? You would say, I'm.
Speaker 2 (33:46):
In cancer cancer virga.
Speaker 3 (33:47):
Cancer cancer virgal. So those are tropical calculations of the zodiac,
which basically says zero aries begins the moment of the
spring equinox in the northern hemisphere. Okay, in sidereal sideial
says that's cool. Okay, Actually zero arees is the point
(34:08):
one hundred degrees opposite fixed star Spica. Those two things
actually used to be the same.
Speaker 2 (34:15):
Fixed Starspeka on one hundred points, fixed star Spika.
Speaker 3 (34:18):
And the beginning of spring, meaning that.
Speaker 2 (34:20):
The yes yes, yes, yes.
Speaker 3 (34:23):
Right, meaning that the way ancients even knew it was
spring in part is because because this fixed star Spika
was setting or whatever rising in the sun was setting
or something like that, right, So that calculation difference, basically,
if you're familiar with the term precession of the equinoxes,
it's literally the equinox moving backwards through the zodiac. So
(34:43):
not being at zero aries right now, it's like, I
don't know, somewhere in Pisces, but what that means, basically,
is that there is a twenty four degree discrepancy between
the signs in tropical and the signs in sidereal. So
all of your stuff would move back wards.
Speaker 2 (35:01):
I mean, how do we gauge twenty four degrees?
Speaker 3 (35:04):
So every sign is thirty degrees equally thirty degrees? Right,
so you got zero, went to throop of five, six, seven, eight,
all the way through twenty nine degrees fifty nine minutes,
fifty nine seconds of art because we're talking about a circle, right,
So all of that is shyn To tell me I'm
not a cancer, I don't know. I would have to
pull up your chart. You might be still, I don't know,
(35:24):
but even that a man.
Speaker 2 (35:25):
Deep deep answer.
Speaker 3 (35:27):
Okay, but this is the thing.
Speaker 2 (35:28):
Well, let me just tell you this.
Speaker 3 (35:29):
Okay, go ahead, go ahead ahead.
Speaker 1 (35:30):
I've had several several from what I understand now, tropical yes, astrology,
astrology readings, and without fail, whether they know me or
don't know me, they're always like, you're exactly what your
chart says you are, says you are, Like there has
never been a oh that's odd ever, like there's always
(35:52):
more so that they're shocked at how very I'm like
living it.
Speaker 2 (35:56):
Out, yeah, yeah, yeah, in the whole color.
Speaker 1 (36:00):
And I had a reading earlier this year by someone
who didn't know me at all beyond the internets. Okay,
and she didn't even really know me by the internets
like that either. But it was also like even more
accurate than any other reading I'd ever had.
Speaker 3 (36:11):
Okay. When you say accurate, quantify that, like qualify that,
what is that experience like for that?
Speaker 1 (36:17):
Okay, I would say accurate in that she was referencing
things that she didn't know about that were very real.
So it's one thing to say you went through a
difficult time, right.
Speaker 3 (36:30):
Very generic.
Speaker 1 (36:31):
It's another thing to say you went through a time
where you were being discredited, or you went through a
time of deep solitude, or you went through a time
of isolate like you were being ostracized or isolated. And
she was like making references like that that in the
context that she was using them, and she just wouldn't
(36:53):
have known, but she was right, you know. And then
I would say accuracy also just in the like using
my chart to describe my person and my purpose and
my principles, and it was spot.
Speaker 3 (37:08):
On. Okay. Now I have my opinions about tropical astrology,
but I also know that there are people who use
it well. I am a patterned person and I need
things to be consistent and very logical. Like in my brain,
everything needs a container in category and it has to
fit every time. And it wasn't working that way with
(37:30):
me for tropical interests at all. I stay because years because,
for example, the boundaries between like what a planet is,
what a sign is, and what a house is we're
very blurry, so that sometimes they will be talking about
a sign, but then they were talking about a planet
and a house and I'm like, wait, no, which would
you have said?
Speaker 2 (37:48):
It was a planet though, right?
Speaker 3 (37:50):
So if you could help me out, tell me which
one it is? Right? So I'll say this. You kind
of highlighted one of the distinctions between my work and
how people generally experience astrology. And maybe there are people
who do it this way with tropical I don't know,
but I find broadly tropical astrology to be very prescriptive
(38:13):
in the sense of, this is who you are when
you come get a reading for me. My clients will
tell you. For example, I was just doing readings live
on Instagram a couple of days ago, and people just
give me their birth time. I saw in alignment. I say,
you have a history of breast cancer in your family,
and this is why can.
Speaker 2 (38:30):
We do that today?
Speaker 3 (38:31):
You want to?
Speaker 2 (38:32):
Yes, then let's do it. Growl Oh my gosh, let's
do it.
Speaker 3 (38:36):
You want me to pull it up now? Like, yeah,
let's do that. Okay, I'm gonna put me. Uh hold on, mom, mom,
I love it outside.
Speaker 2 (38:50):
Hold on, go always forget my birth time. Just pull
out my birth certificate right quick.
Speaker 3 (38:56):
But also ask your mother what she remembers. Ask her
what she remembers.
Speaker 1 (39:00):
Am I asking her specifically what she remembers about, just
as the third time?
Speaker 3 (39:04):
Yeah, just the time? What time was I born? What
time of day it was? Just to make sure that
it's you know what I'm saying, because sometimes, like Beyonce
released that birth certificate that is not her birth time.
She played in everybody's face. Did you see that? No,
there's a picture of her birth certificate in the Cowboy
Carter whatever book. That ain't her birth time. She's sitting
(39:26):
y'all on a blank mission. The most private person in
the universe. I play with me.
Speaker 2 (39:31):
On one second. Okay, So I was born at eleven
forty five, am Okay?
Speaker 3 (39:37):
What's the birthday?
Speaker 1 (39:38):
July first, nineteen eighty one, Inglewood, California.
Speaker 3 (39:42):
Did you say eleven forty nine?
Speaker 2 (39:43):
Eleven forty five?
Speaker 3 (39:45):
Okay, so disclaimer explanation up front. I read very differently
than what you're expecting. So I'm not about having.
Speaker 2 (39:56):
The expectations because you've already made it abundantly. Kid, you've
made that I have. No, I'm like, I'm here, I'm
just a receptor.
Speaker 1 (40:05):
All right, Well, we're gonna head into the Patreon only
section of this episode where you guys can hear the
rest of my reading, So let's do it.
Speaker 2 (40:15):
What's she gonna say? How am I not a cancer? Nah?
Speaker 1 (40:19):
Well it's not that I'm not a cancer. I'm just
not a cancer over there. Well, this all though, I mean, okay,
because we have we're short on time. I was already
gonna pay for a real reading anyway. I told you that,
mon Yeah yeah.
Speaker 3 (40:36):
Yeah yeah yeah. So anyways, that's that on that, no cancer.
Lots of mercury, lots of verbalizing, very meticulous in how
you communicate fear of being misunderstood, big, big, big thing.
Your feelings may be the most important thing to you,
but they don't come off that way. What comes off
is that what you know is the most important part
(40:57):
of who you are. That's why you have a podcast,
and you spend all your time telling people what you know.
You don't spend all your time talking about your feelings.
Speaker 2 (41:03):
You haven't heard this podcast.
Speaker 5 (41:06):
I'm talking about my feelings, and I hear all the
opinions are not feelings, No, but I talk about my
feelings like this upset me, this made me feel good,
This made me feel sad.
Speaker 3 (41:21):
No, no, no, that ain't it. That's not what I mean.
Speaker 2 (41:24):
What do you mean?
Speaker 3 (41:25):
I mean? My son is a person who has real cancer, Okay, right,
he's got cancer, moon and mercury. And when I say
his feelings are the most important part of who I am,
he loses the ability to communicate articulately all the time.
He goes mute because his emotions are so overwhelming. For you,
(41:47):
the more amped up and emotional you are, the more
words you have.
Speaker 1 (41:51):
You know why, though, Because because my feelings were being dismissed,
and so I had to find a way to community,
like I could have gone one of two ways. I
could have either gone the mute or I went the
You're just gonna hear me all the time.
Speaker 3 (42:06):
Right, And that's emotional labor that you're doing because people
are not making the attempt to understand you, just like
I don't did what I said, right, He can't do that.
He can't do that.
Speaker 1 (42:16):
But that's also I feel like also kind of in
the male thing. You think, yes, I do, because gender
is a social construct. But in this society that we're in,
I do feel like women expressing feelings is something we're
seeing all the time. Yeah, so even with the most
parenting that's there to encourage it, it's like that. But
I don't see it like that, you know, like it's
(42:36):
just not there. Whereas true, I was also seeing someone
like express their feelings all the time really love thum
thumt through but.
Speaker 3 (42:44):
She But let me let me say this last thing.
Having words for feelings is not the same as expressing feelings.
How come, because expressing feelings is about the effect that
you have on other people, regardless of the word words
that you use. I can express the feeling of sadness
by crying. I can express the feeling of sadness by
(43:05):
going in my room and closing the door. Oftentimes, when
I say I'm sad, people don't believe that I'm sad,
because if I was really sad, I would be doing
some other behavior that actually showed that I'm sad. And
I see that with you all the time. People don't
believe that you've actually been hurt, and people don't believe
that you actually have negatively been affected by something that
someone says and does to you. Because you're so good
(43:28):
at using words, it doesn't come off as emotional. It
comes off as intellectual communication of something that is emotional
for you.
Speaker 1 (43:35):
But that is me expressing my feelings, right, But in
the social construct of things you're saying, it doesn't mean
the same thing.
Speaker 3 (43:42):
No, they don't, and not even socially, a word for
something is not the same as the expression of something.
Speaker 1 (43:48):
Right, So for instance, like I remember one time I
was playing tennis with Devon, my ex, and he was
beating me like relentlessly, and I just was like so
upset about it, and I just like wasn't having fun
and because you were losing, yeah, and.
Speaker 2 (44:05):
But I was losing.
Speaker 1 (44:05):
Because I myself wasn't doing the best. Like it wasn't
about him. It was more like I'm angry with myself
because I keep messing up. But it was coming off
as anger when really what it was is more so
like a fear that I suck.
Speaker 2 (44:19):
Like that's really what it was.
Speaker 1 (44:21):
And so I had to stop myself because I like
worked myself up and I had to stop myself, and
I was like, I'm expressing anger, but I'm.
Speaker 2 (44:30):
Really like scared. That's why I'm mad. And then I
started crying.
Speaker 1 (44:37):
That's what happens in a house full of people trying
to figure it out.
Speaker 3 (44:40):
So that's a really interesting story. I'll have to file
that in my database.
Speaker 1 (44:45):
And I had only been able to do that because
at the time I had challenged him, like I was like,
we can't stay together unless you really do some emotional work,
like you need to be reading the workbook and going
to therapy, et cetera, et cetera, because I'm doing all
of the emotional labor of this relationship and I'm dying
like I can't.
Speaker 3 (45:05):
And people with water don't do emotional labor. I know
I'm breaking your brain, but like water doesn't have words,
you know what I mean, Like water is not words.
Water is I could say, yeah, and somebody is going
to come and figure out what's wrong with me, but
that didn't happen for you. You had to be like,
(45:26):
first you did X, and then you did why.
Speaker 1 (45:28):
But I only had to do that or else. But
I was going to continue to be harmed, Like I
don't know that.
Speaker 3 (45:33):
And that's a description of your environment that you were
born into and the way that you survived it.
Speaker 1 (45:38):
You see now, yeah, yeah, yeah, but I'm not going
to return all this cancer stuff.
Speaker 3 (45:44):
You could keep it, you could keep it. I'm gonna
telling you people be having the biggest identity crisis.
Speaker 1 (45:49):
Become tropical. I'm a tropical girl. I'm from Grenada.
Speaker 3 (45:58):
But to our original conversation around mysticism, perfect astrology is
a language that people are using to connect with one another.
And that's what makes what I do really hard because
I'm like, Na, Actually your worst fear is humiliation. And
I know you think Leo is like, Hi, everybody look
(46:19):
at me, right, but like you actually don't have that
type of personality at all. Like you're a performer, but
you don't have the everybody look at me. Leo is
being not an exhibitionist at all. Leo is very much
I hope that they don't see this thing that I'm
really insecure about. Please don't look at it. Don't look
at it. Don't look at it. Don't look at it. Please,
(46:41):
don't see it, don't call it out, don't name it.
And people are constantly doing it to you, especially often
as a way to like put you in your place.
Speaker 2 (46:50):
That's why it's used.
Speaker 3 (46:51):
Yeah, yeah, it's to put you in your place. It's like, oh,
let you don't see this and know this about yourself,
so let me tell you. And it's just like, now
you got to like, are y'all all seeing things that
I don't know about myself? Do I have to? Like?
All right, that's a vote for Leo for me. I'm
glad we figured that out. See now when I read
your chart, we don't have to go through all of that.
Speaker 2 (47:11):
Perfect.
Speaker 3 (47:11):
Let me ask you a question, Amanda. Yeah, how are
you feeling right now?
Speaker 2 (47:16):
How am I feeling right now? I am feeling.
Speaker 1 (47:21):
A little disoriented. Yeah, yeah, yeah, because it's a lot
of yeah, it's so so so, there's no anchor. No,
the meaning of everything is changing, bingo. And we are
almost exactly a year out from when I went through
(47:44):
like the biggest kind of identity shift of my life,
which was when I went through this whole ostracizing from
black media, by black media, from black Hollywood, and you know,
all this whole smear campaign around Amanda Sieals is unlikable, et.
Speaker 2 (47:58):
Cetera, et cetera.
Speaker 1 (47:59):
And so there was like all these articles that were
written that we're saying, you don't belong here because of
how you exist.
Speaker 2 (48:06):
It's not because of something I've done, but just because.
Speaker 3 (48:09):
Of how you are.
Speaker 2 (48:10):
Just it, that's it, just how you are.
Speaker 1 (48:12):
And in that process, I had to find my way
out of that, Like I had to cry my way
through it, I had to claw my way through it
in terms of deciding, well, where is my identity, where
does it really exist? Like yes, And so I think
there's also just like timing wise, like it's like literally.
Speaker 2 (48:35):
Almost to the day that all of that started, and I.
Speaker 3 (48:38):
Was about some astrology timing fair exactly.
Speaker 1 (48:43):
And then again, I feel like I'm on the verge
of being called to something higher and I just feel
like I'm having to really stabilize myself in what I
know of my guides, what I know of my principles,
(49:04):
my values, et cetera, to receive it.
Speaker 3 (49:07):
Yeah, No, that's really real. And I think one of
the languages that I've used is that We're in a
collective identity crisis and have been for some time, but
I think it's much more apparent right now, and it
distills down to the individual. I mean, one of the
big ways I see that is this whole thing with
like trans people, who are like one percent of the
population if that. But people are going through a whole
(49:30):
entire like losing their mind because it's like, oh my god,
if this trans person is a woman, what does that
make me? And it's like, why is it that your
identity has to be reference to someone else's That's the issue.
Speaker 1 (49:42):
It's the same with Zionists and Palestinians, right, It's like, oh,
my safety is attached to the harm of these people,
and if these people exist, then exist.
Speaker 3 (49:53):
Right. It's like, that's some real messed up math you're doing.
Can you show me the work on the board? Please
show it?
Speaker 2 (49:58):
Please? Where did you carry the Wand I don't think
you were supposed to carry the water over there?
Speaker 1 (50:04):
And I'm also seeing that just as black people in
the United States, And that's what you know, Sinners really
profoundly spoke to to me, was the concept of assimilation
as some form of liberation, And ultimately it is not.
You're assimilating into a burning house. You are assimilating into immorality.
So ultimately, what the liberation that you're looking for them?
(50:27):
People don't even have that liberation, so they can't give
it to you what they don't have. And when I
see a lot of black people trying to figure out
right now, is wait a minute, was the civil rights
move a really not a success?
Speaker 5 (50:40):
No?
Speaker 3 (50:40):
Okay, And we've been trying to tell you that the
past sixty years.
Speaker 1 (50:44):
We did not inherit freedom. We inherited a freedom fight.
And there are benchmarks that have brought us, you.
Speaker 3 (50:53):
Know, further along less suffering than previous generations.
Speaker 2 (50:57):
But it's like as the bar that low.
Speaker 1 (50:59):
Absolutely, and that's where I feel like the identity crisis
for black people and I find myself and you said
this in the reading. I am planning to go get
my PhD.
Speaker 3 (51:09):
Yeah, Jupiter's about to enter Gemini on May fourteenth and
go over your mercury Sun and Moon.
Speaker 2 (51:14):
I don't want to be known as Amanda the actress.
Speaker 3 (51:18):
Oh oh oh, yes, you are Leo Rising, because there
are eclipses there right now. And one of the things
that I say about these eclipses is whose vision determines
what you see when you look at Amanda Seals youth
in the mirror, Whose vision, whose eyes? Whose judgment is
shaping that? And you just said it. I don't want
to be known as Amanda Seals the actress because your
(51:42):
intellect and your knowledge and your ability to teach and
say the thing is the calling for you.
Speaker 2 (51:51):
Yes.
Speaker 1 (51:52):
Yeah, Like if that's on my obituary, I'm a haunt y'all.
That's so real. I love this so much. I want
that by the time I leave this earth. They're like,
remember she was on that TV show, Like that's what
I want. Remember when she Remember when, remember back then
when she was Because I feel like I am here
(52:17):
to help usher us and I feel like this is
what every time I come back. I'm here to help
usher us to the next and I feel very called
right now to be Like my guide showed up the
other day and we're like, you can't leave.
Speaker 2 (52:30):
Like a lot of my friends are like, we're moving
to this place. We're moving to this place, like we're
escaping the United States. And my guys were.
Speaker 1 (52:35):
Like, not you, sorry, boo, You're supposed to be here.
And my mom was like, you can't run. You can't run.
Speaker 3 (52:43):
The thing that ostracizes you is your calling.
Speaker 2 (52:46):
I know.
Speaker 1 (52:47):
That's why it's so freaking annoying because I'm Cassandra.
Speaker 3 (52:51):
But it's also like, when that whole thing was going
on for you, the thing that I kept thinking about
was I was like, Amanda has to choose between belonging
and authenticity, and.
Speaker 2 (53:02):
I chose authenticity.
Speaker 3 (53:03):
Yeah, And the cost of that is that people are
not going to when you choose your authentic self. It
magnifies how inauthentic people are. But they don't but they
don't know that they're being inauthentic. They don't know it.
That's not what they call it. It's such a conundrum,
you know. I wanted to say one more thing you
(53:24):
talked about, like freedom and liberation, and this is something
that I think about a lot in that I see
freedom as a personal alleviation of my struggles. Freedom is
a better job. Freedom is ooh, I got my free papers.
Freedom is right my bills are paid. Freedom is I
work for myself. Liberation is collective freedom. As long as
(53:49):
anybody's healthcare is tied to their employment, whatever good stuff
I got going on is in danger as long as
any person is deprived of self determination and the right
to do process. I am in danger. I don't care
if you don't identify as an immigrant, a trans person,
a protester, a Palestinian. That's where they get you. You
(54:13):
think that because you don't fall into that category, you're safe,
but you're not.
Speaker 4 (54:17):
So.
Speaker 3 (54:18):
Liberation is a group project that we have to yeah,
that we have to imagine together. And to your point
about the identity crisis of black people, black people are like, yeah,
I'm sorry, your little DEEI thing at Target was great
for you. And look how quickly they snatch that away
because that wasn't liberation. That was a temporary set of circumstances.
Speaker 1 (54:41):
Boycott everyone but me that bless their hearts, because ultimately
that's in doctrination, that's what that is. I couldn't even
I just was. I say, you know, this is why
we got work to do.
Speaker 3 (54:57):
We do and you're gonna do it, girl, We do it.
Speaker 2 (55:10):
The last.
Speaker 1 (55:16):
Thank you so much for this insight and for not
only just talking about it, but then demonstrating for folks
in reality a misconception of mysticism. So many of us
have never heard of this other side of astrology. We
didn't know that I was a Leo Rising, which I
will have a very hard time accepting.
Speaker 3 (55:34):
But that's okay. Just don't go looking on the internet
and look up Leo because that's never going to be
this right.
Speaker 2 (55:41):
It's not what I'm saying, it's not what you're saying.
Speaker 1 (55:43):
But I hope for y'all this helps to illuminate for
you that the misunderstanding around mysticism is deeply grounded, rooted,
just founded in a lack of curiosity, and that lack
of curiosity was supplanted by those who just don't want
(56:03):
you to know.
Speaker 2 (56:05):
To make you give up what's yours because you knowing
anything other than what they've given you to know they
consider to be a threat.
Speaker 3 (56:14):
If you don't have this book right here, Decolonizing the Mind,
the politics of language in African literature. He's talking about
in some ways this topic, you might find it very interesting.
Speaker 1 (56:25):
Well, you know, I am a Gemini, Gemini Gemini.
Speaker 2 (56:32):
This has been lovely. Thank you, so so much.
Speaker 3 (56:34):
Thank you, Amanda. I really appreciate the conversations today, do
you too,
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