#troe2019

We remember.

Udine, Italy.

Image descriptions: 1. A view from below of a 20 foot garland with one blossom for each of the trans people reported killed in the last year.

2. A close up of about 40 partially melted candles lit in honor of our beloved dead.

3. A post-it note stuck to a mirror reading "You have been loved. You are loved. You will always be LOVED. Remember them and remember us."

4. A post-it note stuck to a wall reading "The first day I was happy with myself was the day I realized I looked like you, belonged with you, my trans family. I'll never be able to repay you all."

5. An altar with nine candles, a glass of water, and various stones and items contributed by participants.

On the final night of #troe2019, we led a ritual at our local LGBTQ Center. Instead of just reciting names and causes of death until everyone went home upset, we spent a little time with our lost family members, learned a little bit about them, felt them as people, as present, as important to us. We invited participants to write notes to living, dead, and not-yet-born family members to contribute to the altar, and we displayed a wreath with a blossom for each of the names on this year’s list.

Our family’s care for each other spans across time, across death. The grief we feel for our lost beloveds is just our love for them yearning to touch across distance, time, and death. The systems we struggle against can seem so enormous, they can seem to enclose us until there is no room left to breathe. But now is not the time to falter. Now is the time to hold fast to each other. 

Transgender Rite of Ancestor Elevation 2019, Ninth Night, and the Trans Day of Remembrance

Today’s candle is one of the little trees, for the Trans Day of Remembrance and all the lives cut down too soon.  The label on the bottom noted this will burn for 24 hours, and so I did my altar work in the morning with rainbows from the window crystals zipping around, and the altar can stay lit right through until tomorrow if the candle really goes that long.

The book added today is a small triangular journal notebook.  It’s where I have begun writing down all the ‘boy’ stuff that happened to me in my life, and which was never recognized or supported as being truly part of me.

I was asked to share by one of the mods of @trans-rite my divination from last night, so I will. I'm not very good at tarot so I apologize if I got something wildly off base but this is what I took from it.

as a soft opening to the rite I did a reading to get a feel of what I should aim to do, specifically with the question "what is needed by participating?"

my Mucha deck gave me the Queen of Swords, 3 of Staves (wands) reversed, and Knight of Staves reversed

for the Queen of Swords there is a specific keyword mentioned of 'strategy for the advancement of loved ones' which definitely works well for the rite in question. theres is a no nonsense feeling to her, in the sense that she wont sugar coat things. I take this as being honest and forward

the 3 of Staves of the Mucha deck is about staying behind while everyone else sets out. the man stands watching the fleet of ships leave from shore. that is of course it when it is upright, so reversed I got the impression that either I needed to tread forward with everyone else or be involved. as the 3 of Wands came up in the opening divination for the folx of @trans-rite and had a heavy connotation of outreach and connecting with others this makes sense for my card as well even if its reversed

Knight of Staves is an intense one, of diving in with drive with nothing but passion alone. along with the upright Queen of Swords, and the fact it's been reversed, I take this as allowing myself to dive in with passion but to THINK beforehand.

so what I got from this in its entirety is that I need the passion I have for my community to drive me, but I DO need to think on it and not just throw myself at it. this is about community and I need to become a part of it again.

It’s coming up on time to set up our altars and we’ve just done our yearly preparatory divination. We consulted with the Ancestor Helping Spirits who tend the line, Marsha P. Johnson, Sylvia Rivera, and Leslie Feinburg, as well as the daemon Agdistis to ask them if they still want to be part of the Elevation this year and if there’s anything they want us to do this year that we haven’t done in the past. We used the Tarot of the Silicon Dawn rather than our usual method and we found the tone to be more dramatic than it’s been in the past. We theorize this tonal difference is just shaped by the medium, since it’s a HIGH drama deck.

The theme we got from this year’s divination was that all of them want to continue to participate on the condition that we step it up. The team has been small since the beginning, and we have focused most of our energy on the creation of the structures rather than on outreach. The divination suggested that our helping spirits want us to bring in more hands to make the elevation more effective. We took from this that a public altar might be a good next step – something that we can make publicly available for other people to join us at nightly, as well as something larger on the final night for which we do intentional outreach and at which we invite the power of other participants in that space.

The messages also said simplify, streamline, refine – that rather than spending an hour with prayers and songs at the altar every night, we should be keeping the nightly elevation simple, perhaps concentrating the complexity and broadening on the final night, when we make it open.

We don’t think that this means that we’ve been doing it wrong for the last few years, but only that we’ve come to a place with the way we’re doing it that feels familiar, which means that now it’s time to grow, refine our focus, and be brave and ambitious in our willingness to share the things that feel scary and crazy with other people. The Three of Wands appeared three times in this reading, which in this deck is a card of signal boost, multiple radio towers with overlapping broadcasts to communicate with each other and outward.

In the cards that we drew for our group’s personal helping spirit, Agdistis, we also received the message that we need to keep refining our structures to cleanse participants of the miasma that can accumulate from working with the dead, and so we’re going to put some energy towards creating new tools to share for that so that all of us can ensure that this work is sustainable rather than draining.

And this year we want to invite our comrades and followers, whether you’ve been with us for years or whether this is your first time here, to do outreach with us – invite the people in your life to observe the elevation with you, make your altar public if you can, bring other people into the space to lend their hands to the work with yours.

We’re grateful to have you joining us. Onward, together.

Transgender Rite of Ancestor Elevation 2019, Fourth Night