#gsfmonth

“We need a paradigm shift in who we are and where we want to get to. And I don’t think it’s possible to make those types of changes without returning to the land.”

Read this Color of Food article about Renard “Azibo” Turner, a longtime Virginia farmer who is adamant in his belief that returning to the land will restore and preserve Black autonomy. 

Introducing Khi Armand, in his own words: Khi Armand is an intuitive consultant, spirit-initiated shaman, and interdisciplinary artist living in Brooklyn. An initiate of The Unnamed Path, a shamanic tradition for men-who-love-men, and a member of the Association of Independent Readers and Rootworkers, he holds a Masters in Performance Studies from NYU and a BA in Ritual Anthropology from Hampshire College. Khi is the author of Deliverance! Hoodoo Spells of Uncrossing, Healing, & Protection. You can find out more about his practice at his Conjure in the City website as well as his blog. Here at Good Sense Farm we like to think of ourselves as conjurers in the city, too: urban farm, honey and fungi apothecary, greenhouse/safehouse for Black witches and fairies. Conjure knows conjure. And here’s to getting to know Khi even better.... One of the traditions you work in is Southern Conjure/Hoodoo. Do you have any thoughts on how Hoodoo (or other traditions you work within) can address land legacy/trauma among Blackfolks? This is something I think about constantly as a few of the modalities --emotional clearing and ancestral healing through shamanic practices -- address this directly. Trauma is multi-layered and exists in our bodies. There are, generally, the personal, daily traumas that we experience, the traumas dealt to us in early childhood within our families of origin, and then traumas that exist within ancestral patterns. The daily traumas are often a re-triggering of the childhood traumas. These are moments in which we, as children, believed that adults around us would not love us for one reason or another and that, being dependent upon those adults, we would be abandoned and would die (or be otherwise annihilated). Gratefully, we can resolve those energies directly-- retrieving and integrating those child and soul parts through the aforementioned modalities and find ourselves more whole and resilient. This is not to say that we won't experience racism, misogyny, queerphobia, and other types of rejection, but that we can be less beholden to them and find ourselves less controlled and triggered by the actions of others. This is why I stress making emotional healing a priority for everyone even within the context of Southern Conjure/Hoodoo. Though it's most popular as a modality for manifesting desires and exerting control over one's life and environment through magical acts, the tradition contains a multitude of tools for healing. Healing is a widely overlooked yet hugely important component in our ability to manifest our desires, and lack of healing is the primary reason why we unconsciously attract and manifest experiences we'd rather not have. Hoodoo formulas and conjurations like Uncrossing, Cut-and-Clear, Healing, Blessing, King Solomon Wisdom, Crucible of Courage, Mastery, and others can all be strategically employed through means of candle work, bathing rites, and talismans toward helping us, in the words of Erykah Badu, "get over that hump" and make progress toward greater wholeness in our lives. These can also be used to shift family dynamics and botanicals such as Low John (Beth Root), Marjoram, and Basil are known for their ability to bring healing and resolution to acute family dramas, being applied through floorwashes, incenses, candle workings, and group sweetening jars. Ancestral traumas are both acute and overt, manifesting as intentional ancestral curses, unresolved ancestors who have not yet moved on and are ladening one or more family members with their burdens, and deeper, far older ancestral patterns set in motion by ancestors who left not-so-great legacies. Because Hoodoo, as it’s popularly known today, includes elements of Spiritualism, acts of Ancestral Elevation are a traditional and effective tool for moving on wayward ancestors that are burdening the living. Additionally, engagement with Ancestral Helping Spirits who lived well and died well through altar maintenances, regular offerings, song, and two-way communication invites their courage, talents, wisdom, and resilience into our lives more fully. Both the former and latter issues, I find, require moderate-to-significant skill and finely-tuned relationships with helping spirits to accomplish. Please tell us more about these “honey jars worked on employers for a pay raise.”

Sure! These were honey jars I crafted many years ago for a client to find favor with his employers. They included strong personal concerns of each along with plants like Chamomile (encourages financial generosity) and Licorice Root (for getting the upper hand) amongst others. Sweetening jars are very popular in hoodoo and can be crafted not only to sweeten others to oneself but to sweeten money to you as well, making it easier to attract and keep. In that instance, paper currency (preferably of a high denomination) is "fixed" with writings, sigils, oils, and powders before being wrapped around botanicals, minerals, and/or animalia and being immersed in a sweetener such as honey, sugar, or syrup and "worked" through prayer, shaking the jar, and even the burning of candles on top of it once or more each week. Could you say more about: "Employing ethnographic necromancy and seedy Craigslist ads to part the veil between the ephemeral-eternal, the individual-communal, and the brown body-justice..."? You found one of my performance bios, haha! I have an obsession with history. I view everything through a historical lens -- spaces, bodies, migrations, etc. A notable consideration is how some shamanic cultures view us, the living, as the ancestors who have arrived and our descendants as the ancestors yet-to-come. Time and space are not what popular belief in the West perceives them to be. Capitalism and other systems that are failing us thrive by dismissing, ignoring, and outright blinding us to context so that bodies, spaces, cultures, resources, and even time itself can be easily exploited without resistance. History, of course, is a story, so even those histories we "know" and celebrate contain vast omissions of persons, peoples, and types of people. As a storyteller, I want the tea on times and places that differ from my own and the dead can provide firsthand accounts of their lives and the times within which they lived. This information can be attained through simple acts of mediumship, or more thorough and intensive long-term projects like when I wrote a play in undergrad about the Lakota peoples based on dreams that I had. I did a ton of dramaturgical research, but I also visited Pine Ridge Reservation to commune with the land and the people, had an altar devoted to the process with photos of notable Lakota chiefs on it with offerings to them, and even did some group seance work. This is what I mean by ethnographic necromancy -- we can plug in the holes and round out our understandings of our stories, histories, and even spiritual technologies by talking to the dead. Audre Lorde was 100% correct when she said that the master's tools will never dismantle the master's house. The master's primary tool is objective empiricism -- the worldview that completely disenchants the world and tells us that the only things that are real are those that can be experienced through the five physical senses. It's done an incredible job of cutting us off from our power of intuition, the importance of our nighttime dreams, the voices and urgings of spirits of the dead and of the land and, as a result, from our own power as individuals and as peoples. Talk about occluding context, right? So many of the solutions that we are desperate for require re-engaging these relationships with ourselves and these energies around us. 

I mentioned seedy Craigslist ads because, on my personal journey, I've always been interested in the place between colonialism and the complexity of desire. Add to this queer histories of repression and isolation and the unprecedented ability to order, like from a menu, body parts and associated acts and we've got ourselves a recipe for something really thrilling, entertaining, hilarious, inspiring, painful, and powerful.   Have a ritual/tool of manifestation for our readers? A bath made of Lemon, Lemon Grass, and Rue is great for helping let go and cut ties to the past so that you can welcome something new. You can have something in mind that you want to let go of, some kind of emotional attachment, or you can simply be willing to let go of whatever no longer serves you. Either way, be sure to speak to the ingredients, asking for their aid and thanking them for their medicine. Brew them as a tea in a pot, strain, let cool, and pour over oneself after taking your morning shower. Place the pot between your legs to catch the run-off water while you wipe your body downwards, affirming that you have let go of that which no longer served you. Toss this run-off water at the base of a strong, tall tree willing to drain the issue into the earth, or toss it out at a crossroads and walk home without looking back. Be sure to immediately take some action that intentionally replaces what you just got rid of (self-anointing with olive oil that Psalm 23 has been prayed over works well). Perform every morning for an odd number of days (3, 7, 9, or 13) for greatest effect.   Projects you're excited about? Upcoming events?  I'm teaching a 6-week webinar series titled Trance, Mediumship, & Divination starting October 6th which is going to be a total blast. It will include tons of hands-on practice and exploration of tools and techniques but also context for understanding psychism and trance through different cultural lenses. It'll be a great class for professional diviners as well as those who've never picked up a pack of tarot cards or spirit-travelled in their lives.   Also, my fiancée Langston Kahn (of shamanbomb.com, soon to be Occupy-Your-Heart.com) and I are teaching a workshop at the upcoming Fire & Ink IV: Witness conference in Detroit in October on mediumship and creativity where I'll also be participating in a reading of Djola Branner's play sash & trim--which will be my third opportunity to work with this deeply affecting play written in the Jazz Aesthetic. Anything else you want to share? An ancestor chant we sing in the Last Mask Community goes: We are standing on your bones We are calling you home We are thankful for your gifts We are thankful for your song You who've waited for so long