Queer Ancestor Spotlight: The Lady Chablis
I am so very excited to share a spotlight on The Lady Chablis! She is not only an iconic figure, but also part of the rich cultural legacy of one of my favorite cities - Savannah, GA - and my favorite book - Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil.
The Lady Chablis, also known as The Grand Empress and The Doll, was born in Quincy, FL on March 11, 1957. Chablis did not prefer to go by any labels other than “The Lady Chablis” and did not personally identify as a drag queen. Through exposure in John Berendt’s best-selling 1994 book, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, and subsequent film adaptation Chablis became one of the first trans performers to be introduced to a national audience.
Guest Post: I Know My Value Ritual
I’m very excited to share another guest post from my friend Boudica! Y’all might remember a previous ritual she shared to America’s forgotten goddess, Columbia. This time she shares a ritual to reaffirm and reclaim your value that is inspired by the MCU’s Agent Carter. I hope you enjoy this pop culture ritual!
Guest Post: Cultivating Hope
I’m excited to again share a guest post from Doozy! In this post Doozy reflects on the necessity of hope in the world. She writes about things we might take for granted or not appreciate, our interconnectedness with the seen and unseen world around us, and the hope those things can provide when things look bleak or we are exhausted by everything happening. She talks about her view on hope as an important magic that takes conscious effort but can transform the world.
Queer Ancestor Spotlight: Chevalier d'Éon
Charles-Geneviève-Louis-Auguste-André-Timothée d'Éon de Beaumont, usually known as the Chevalier d'Éon, was born in October 1728 in Burgundy to a minor noble family. Due to their androgynous physical characteristics and natural abilities as a mimic they served as a French diplomat and spy in England and Russia. For the first 49 years of their life they appeared publicly as a man but after 1777 lived as a woman.
Queer Ancestor Spotlight: Gay and Lesbian Kingdom of the Coral Sea Islands
This month we remember a short-lived micronation that was born as a political response to LGBTQ+ discrimination in Australia. This micronation was founded in 2004 and lasted until 2017. The territory was comprised of small and mostly uninhabited islands and reefs in the Coral Sea, northeast of Queensland, Australia.
Guest Post: Reimagining Our Relationships With Divine Entities
I’m very excited to share this guest post with you. The below essay centers Doozy’s lived experience with an autoimmune disorder and how it informs her relationship to her own body as a way of critically examining relationship-building and power dynamics within establish cosmologies. It dives into the reciprocal relationship between deity and devotee and asks us to deconstruct the idea of “worship” in a way that acknowledges the way both ends of the relationship interact with and depend on one another.
Ritual: Queer Ancestor Dance Party
For Pride Month 2021 I decided to write down and share something that I frequently do on my own as a way to recharge and connect with my Queer Ancestors. I am talking about hosting a Queer Ancestor Dance Party!
Queer Ancestor Spotlight: Bayard Rustin
Bayard Rustin was a central figure in the civil rights movement in United States the 1950s and 1960s. He was well versed in non-violent protest and helped to shape the movement as an advisor and collaborator. Due to his homosexuality, however, he remained in the background sometimes by choice and sometimes by necessity.
Queer Ancestor Spotlight: Pedro Zamora
Pedro Zamora was a Cuban-American AIDS educator and television personality who was a pioneer in humanizing the AIDS epidemic in the early 1990s. He was a cast member on The Real World: San Francisco and was one of the first openly gay men with AIDS to be portrayed in popular media.
Ritual: Cleansing Salt/Herb Shower Scrub
Those who follow me on Twitter may recall a thread I posted a few weeks ago about messages that were channeling me to work through my impostor syndrome. Writing and sharing ritual is a first tentative step in that direction and it challenges two things that I get very anxious talking about - providing rituals or spellwork ideas for folks, and my disabled identity. Whenever I think about writing up a ritual to share I always doubt whether it is good enough, if it is “too basic”, and I tell myself there are probably hundreds like it already posted online or in books so what value is this adding? And when it comes to disability for years I’ve grappled with the internal ableism of not feeling “really disabled” and like claiming that term is somehow wrong, even though I do have physical limitations due to my arm and mobility issues when I’m experiencing a flare up (not to mention the mental health aspect when my depression/anxiety are severe.)