Hello beloveds, 

I have been best reflecting on how to continue bringing the gift of the Dagara divinations—which were gifted to me by my elders end teachers—to the community. I thank all my teachers, especially Malidoma. I am here to honor the spirit of the work and share it with those who seek it. 

To wear the mantle of a diviner in the traditional way, you enter into agreements with the otherworlds and your teachers—human and nonhuman. This is a highly sacred role.
 
​You need to, of course, tend to your body and being so that you are open, grounded, discerning, in order to converse with the ancestors, kontomble, otherkin, energies. The passageways between the worlds need to be tended and opened. All this takes time and effort and other resources, depending on the offerings that are called for. There is an energetic 'bringing down' that needs to happen after the divination. In short, an ancestral or voice divination is not a one-hour enterprise. Even if I am divining for only one person, I need to build in cushion time before and afterwards. 

As I have become busier, it has become harder to take out sporadic time for divinations. Since I am still asked to divine—and I want to show up in a good way for all, including the ancestors, myself, and those seeking divinations—I propose to experiment with setting aside a few dates in the year, which are the only days my books will be open. 

The next divination date will be February 25. I will add more 2023 dates later.
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​Elder Malidoma passed in the early hours this morning. He was a key influence in my life at one time, my teacher of ritual and divination, almost a father figure. His name meant, "to make friends with the stranger/enemy."

​​So many were touched by the glint and spool of his medicine. He spoke to our longing. He poured spirit into arid places—bringing the elegance and lucidity and sophisticated wordplay of the otherworld, weaving these into the medicine of transformation. Malidoma knew how to speak to the inner ear of the heart. He knew how to whip up the spirit. He knew the old ways to the ancestors. He built new templates. He saw in you what you were not willing yet to see. He saw a community's gift of seeing and remembering. He roused us into the initiation of our ancient selves. He was a match-lighter and catalyst. Silver of tongue, magic and promise. Promises cannot always be kept. But look how many he kept. Failure is part of the risk. Yet look how he succeeded. Look what he completed.

There will be none other like Malidoma. Undoubtedly he will be welcomed with open arms and fanfare to the land of the ancestors.

To all whose life he touched, may we express our grief passionately. "Grief is in fact owed to the dead as the only ingredient that can help complete the death process." And, may we give gratitude for the gift of his life.

In my pact with Spirit and the ancestors to bring the medicine of Dagara cowrie shell and voice divinations to those who would benefit from them, I have experimented with many contribution formats so that I am walking this path in integrity. Currently, I suggest a level of contribution, but also make it clear that if that is not within your means, you will not be turned away. Access to the medicine will not be kept from you. Whatever level you contribute at, there is a portion I share with the otherworlds.

If you receive the gift of a divination, I hope you will step into the circle of reciprocity and give according to your means--not as a mundane "payment," but as a contribution that upholds your honoring of the sacredness of the exchange, and the sincerity of your receiving of the gift given by the spirits, and by me as a diviner. 

I hope you will see this as the spiritual obligation this is--something that sweetens and feeds the lines of communication--the web spun between the otherworlds, the divinee, and the diviner. It may not be so for everyone, and this is how I have circumscribed the work—this is what closes the loop for the work as it comes through me.  
 
Everything in the living is a call to practice the sacred. 

The human heart is powerful. If you are out and about—let's say at a grocery store—and find yourself feeling anxiety, fear, overwhelm, or distress, you might try Tonglen, an energy practice from the Tibetan Buddhist tradition.⁣
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Breathe in whatever you are feeling. These feelings may or may not be yours. Breathe in past any constriction, if that feels right. There is nowhere for it to go but your heart, and your heart is a miraculous warrior, an organ of transmutation. ⁣
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Breathe out love. Breathe out love to the world. Breathe out love to those known to you, and those unknown to you. Breathe out softheartedness, and compassion, and lovingkindness. ⁣
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This practice is radical: it disrupts the ego's self-centeredness, and connects us to each other in breath, suffering, and compassion. It breaks us out of our isolation and powerlessness, into expanded awareness.​

May the holy light of the Mother continue to reveal to us the unshakeable center of our being. 

May love continue to call us in. May we keep our hearts open. 

May we shed the defenses that keep our bodymindsouls from experiencing presence. May we dissolve our patterns of fear. May our bodies become instruments of truth. 

May all parts of us come together to cooperate in the evolution of the soul of the planet, soul of humanity. 

May we be remarkable this decade. 

May our actions reflect our love. May we slip out of the dead skin of apathy. 

May we sip day by day the living essence of courage and live our purpose every day. May our purpose be of benefit to the world. 

May we call wisdom to us and harmony to us whenever need them. May they come. 

May we honor how sensitive we are. May we sing and soothe and touch and love ourselves and each other out of trauma and despair.

May we praise the ancestors. May the ancestors visit us.

May we grow good things in the soil. May we celebrate. May we give ourselves plenty of rest. 

May we look at each other in the eyes and say, "I love you," and mean it. 

May we grow sturdier together, and more responsive together. 

May we find our alignment in nature. May the wild, humming, call the children of the Dark Mother to places where only they can go to bring light. 

Last winter, I offered my first community healing divination ritual for people of color at CIIS. I will be returning to CIIS next week with this ritual. May it once again be meaningful, cleanse, and connect the CIIS community of color with the guidance of the ancestors.

Happy winter solstice, beloveds. I greeted the birth of the sun this morning with some others, even though it was a cloudy and rainy dawn in San Francisco. As we prepare to welcome the changing, growing light amidst ourselves here in the Northern Hemisphere, the time of the year is also asking from us inner wakefulness, inner reflection, and inner preparedness. I'm beginning my own work of taking stock!

Utterly grateful for the ancestors, for Spirit, for community.

It is amazing what can happen when they come together in ritual.

Thank you for making yesterday's Community Healing Divination Ritual possible, CIIS Office of Diversity and Inclusion! May we ring in a more beautiful world together.

"The event will bring together people of color at CIIS within the container of a healing divination ritual. Divination is an ancient mode of communing with the ancestors and the elemental natural world, and bringing ourselves in harmony with them. Our ancestors steered their lives in partnership with the wisdom of these other worlds, but such non-rational calls to partnership are devalued in colonial modernity. As we continue to decolonize ourselves and our maps of the sacred, we take back our power to walk hand in hand with living ancestral ways and practices. 

During the divination ritual, we will come together in community so we might talk to Spirit and the ancestors about individual and collective resilience and empowerment, healing and transformation." ​

It is my honor to be​ bringing divinations in the Dagara way at Serpent's Kiss Magick Shop & Botanica in Santa Cruz. When I think of magickal teachers, elders, peers of faith, wisdom, power, and integrity on the path, so many of them converge in the community Serpent's Kiss creates. Beginning this Saturday, September 15, I will be there every third Saturday of the month.

​Please schedule your appointment by calling (831) 423 5477! 

((Love, Monica))

When those belonging to disadvantaged and vulnerable groups have an experience of shame (or suppression of voice), expanding the lens of analysis to include power and privilege might reveal that the shame individuals carry as their own is the shame of the powerful and/or the privileged within the system.