xxxtentacion just died.

for some reason, I felt a way when I saw it. but then I read up on the youngin and was like, “this monkey is trash.” but my grandmother taught me not to speak ill of the dead, so I still wish his mama healing. xxxtentacion=xxxtemptation (spanish definition)
06/18/2018 = 8 the infinity loop. don’t get stuck in this programming. stay focused and diligent on your work.

my homegirl was like, “we know what we need to do.” but I don’t know if we do. we know what we want to do, maybe sometimes. but is there a collective world view that we aspire to, so we can stop living in other people’s imagination of their perfect world? the collective world view that “they” (who is they? you know who they are. but don’t, at the same time) have offered as acceptable, where in 2018, we still…

another homegirl was like, “I remember my friends being distraught when Tupac got shot…but he actually mattered, tho.” well, if pac had died in 2018, we’d probably be saying that he was problematic too. “dear mama” was dope, but didn’t he have a rape case going on for a bit? time loop spells. raise a youngin to his imagined heights in all his problematic glory, then kill him assassination-style. who can tell me why? i don’t really care, it keeps happening, and it’s a rabbit hole of thought i don’t want to go down.

tell me your new moon dreams? the waxing crescent moon is my favorite and my dreams be on ten during this time. i was on a plane going to ghana to talk to some people. i just remembered that’s where my people this is a perfect time to focus on your crystal castles, strawberry gardens, and cherry wine. a good time to reflect on the last time you stood under a waterfall, or the time you have coming to sit in a hot spring in the mountains somewhere you never been before. work your own magic, exalt your ancestors for revealing your truths to you, do your kegels, and hit that malasana to stretch out the hips and activate that root.

i made some flowda wata soap y’all. it’s dope too. i’m working on a body mask right now with activated charcoal, bentonite clay, goat’s milk, and shea. goat’s milk is secondary only to human milk, and i’d give it to my babies before i buy a carton of cow pus from the market. ghana sounds so good right now! sheesh. anyway, click on Pachamama below to order.

 

 

Saturn Energy Wave Ain’t Got Shit To Do With Kanye West

Actually, it does, but not for you personally… But you can watch the throne if you want to. I hope errbody doin good! I’m going down my social media timelines and there are a lot of people upset at Kanye lying on our ancestors, glad about Bill going to jail for rape, mad R. Kelly ain’t been caught yet, and so on and so forth. These trauma and time loop spells are being kicked up several notches, so stay focused on doing your inner healing work and self-family-community protection. Your emotion and attention is how their intention comes to life, so try your best to pull your focus inward and build from there. In my mind, my personal utopian world I imagine, we wouldn’t have to wait this long for justice to be served to the people who abuse women. And anybody spitting ill-informed opinions would be sat down and encouraged to slow down so that their words could be better understood. But I’m not going down that road because this week I was winning in life, so I’ma keep my attention flowing there.

Saturn retrograde is gonna be here until like September 11th. I talk about Saturn energy a lot because it’s the only thing in life that ever kicked my ass. Sometimes, people need they ass whooped. We need a reminder that some of the things we think are true about ourselves, some belief we hold onto so tightly about how and who we are, is limiting and detrimental. News flash! You aren’t all you think you are. You are something else. This retrograde is going to challenge alladat and transform you into an evolved you, if you let it. If it doesn’t serve your greatest good, if it hinders you from being freely compassionate to yourself and others, let it fall away. Don’t let your ego stop you. Tell your ego, “Hey ego, thanks for all you do to protect me, but my heartspace is going through a healing right now.”

Every other weekend, I teach a pendulum class that covers how to use the tool for personal energetic work. One of the goals is to open up communication between your conscious and subconscious minds so that your heartspace can be cleared to cycle and evolve the emotions. I know some people are gonna read that and be like wtf is she talmbout. If you need de white man’s stamp of approval that that’s a real thing, google neurocardiology. It’s a new field of science and medicine that studies the neural connections in the heart and the intelligence that exists there. Essentially, in the same way that the brain has an IQ, so does the heart. I’d call it an Intuition Quotient instead, though. I define the heartspace as the chamber within the heart that works with the brain and spirit to evolve emotions, transform trauma into healing, and bring the Self into balance with universal order. Saturn retrograde is going to present you with some hardcore lessons that will lead to clearing that part of you so that you can move through with less weight on you. More love and self-acceptance. If you’ve applied those lessons and move accordingly, it will be fun and rewarding but the energy might still feel heavy and make you more tired than usual. If you don’t apply the lessons, it will feel like hell.

I have a motto I adopted after my Saturn Return was over that helps me stay rooted and grounded and focused on my own inner work. “I ain’t shit, but at least I know it.” Jadakiss said it on a Styles P song. A sister told me recently that I needed to work on how I speak to myself, but she doesn’t know that I had been disconnected from myself for many years. I had to learn how to connect to my messy self, acknowledge and honor that, so that I could grow up. I’m still growing up. But that statement keeps me honest about my shit. Who here needs to be honest about theirs? Some of us don’t need that motto. Some of us are golden and don’t even know how golden we are. Turn off the tv and log off the book, the gram, and the rest, and get into Self. If you need any assistance in figuring out where to start, the Pendulum Swangin’ class can give you a good starting point. The next one will be on May 15th. Email me at the9minds@gmail.com for details.

 

This Pink Moon Coming

The names for the moon phases were told to colonizers by the indigenous people of America. They told time by the moon, and the Pink Moon signified the best time for planting above ground. Superficial planting.

I think right around now is when winter be like, aight, I’m going away now. Or spring be like, ok winter, STFU now. In either case, this is usually the time things level out and the seasons do what I need them to do. The fact that in nature, something happens to stunt or pause development from one season to the next, I spent some time reflecting on how that has shown up in my own life.

At what age or stage of development am I stuck? When did emotional trauma get the better of me and hold me into your adult years? What kind of goddess am I using that information to transform myself into?

I’m probably between 17 and 25, moving between the 2 stages of youth and womanhood. 4 years ago, I was stuck at 15. It took me that long to overcome the guilt I had been holding around issues regarding sex and sexuality passed down from my mother through her mother and her mother before her. This acknowledgment is part of how we manifest greater. Through this accountability, we can open communication with our subconscious to reveal and heal. So this pink moon, I’m going to be working on accountability for fun and beauty. Because for me, that’s what guilt and trauma recovery looks like. Rituals of leisure, pleasure, and balance. I am still here. That means I can go anywhere I want to go, any direction of my own choosing. My experiences have shaped and molded me. Now that I have control, what new experiences will I engage in to mold myself into the goddess and matriarch that I am?

My birthday is coming up on Monday. I’m getting older, I have a daughter of my own now who I am working on myself daily to raise free. That means I have to get free myself. All these damn programs! We have so much to uninstall. One of the fastest ways to do that is to accept new priorities and making different things important. In honor of this pink moon, which is all about superficial planting, seeding, growing plants above ground, I will be focusing on sowing seeds of what we call superficial beauty. Exfoliating my skin. Brushing it and treating it with hydrotherapy from the inside out. Getting all my smellgoods out, shaking out my shorts and tank tops to get sunkissed. Smiling from all the good experiences I’m about to let myself have. Please check out Le Bijoux Parfum when you can too, because that original scent is LIFE.

Allure Alchemy Ritual Breakdown:

Sit in front of a mirror with your beloved face. Your eyes, your nose, your lips, your teeth, your cheeks, your chin, the hairs on it. Your hair. Your beautiful acne that lets you know something needs adjustment inside your body. Your beautiful blemishes that prove your body has been working on adjusting. Your dimples. Your willpower to feel happy inside. Not a fight, but a flow into that place. Look at your beloved mind. Cynical, optimistic, realistic, pessimistic, afraid, courageous, and ready to expand mind. Let flow and expanse and understanding come to your mind for itself. You are a goddess in the flesh. Right there looking at yourself in the mirror. Gather up a bowl and put some cinnamon, sage, `salt, cayenne, honey or maple syrup, and olive oil in it. Fill your bathtub with water that feels best to your skin, get in and bring the bowl in with you. Submerge the bowl in the water and get every drop of everything in the water. Lay in it all the way back and picture yourself as the Goddess of your blossoming world. Your opening, layering, prosperous world. Feel your power grow as the cinnamon sweetens and burns your path clear, cayenne and salt send nonbeneficial energy and matter away, sage invites balance and purity, and honey attracts love and abundance.

You know the Law of Rhythm, right? Everything flows out and in, swings like a pendulum from inside you to the farthest reaches of the universe and reflects back from there to inside you again. How I get into the flow is through ritual use of the pendulum. I have created an energy chart for myself that I share with students who decide to take my Pendulum Swangin class and I use it to gauge the health of my feelings, then recalibrate and alchemize them when they are in a nonbeneficial state. I don’t need the pendulum to do it. No one does. But it does help confirm that the ways I’ve set out to program myself have been applied. It’s actually less about taking away parts of myself and more about integrating all my selves so that they serve my greater good. Allure in this context is tempting yourself to trust yourself to provide your every desire. Write it down. Project manage it into small, attainable steps. Now go.

Humble and Overestimated

Goddess, Samella Lewis (1968)

Sometimes I tend to make everything about me. This is selfish, and being at either of these extremes- humble or overestimated- make it a bad kind of selfish. I started repeating a line from a Styles P song where Jadakiss said, “I ain’t shit, but at least I know it.” I’ve said it on the show a few times, and it’s not to say that I for real ain’t shit. It’s to say, I’m not sitting here overestimating my holiness, and I’m not pretending to be an underling either. I used to do both, and they both wack. So I can see it usually on both sides. Every so often you come up on a test that says, “Which way you gon go? What’s it gonbi?” And something core is tested. Then you may or may not see, this is a test. What’s the path of least resistance? How do I get there from here in one piece with everything fulfilled? I think that’s why we love divination so much. Intuition is so difficult to trust these days but for a clear and accurate divination, you have to trust your intuition, so you’re back at square one. It’s easy for someone outside to say, just trust it, but you know where you at with it. I write how I talk, for anyone who’s keeping up. I am learning how to trust my intuition like this:

1. Get off social media if you haven’t figured out how to use it, which is sparingly. Mainly because Universities that have done social media addiction studies and that shit is real. It’s difficult to filter out your voice and the voices you need to hear when everyone else’s circumstances are filling up your headspace. I’m talking to myself.
2. Learn about your intuition. How do the different intuitive alarms feel? Is it the same for every scenario? Feel that feeling in your gut. Some people feel it in they chest. Some people’s fingers twitch. Everybody’s feeling comes in its own way, but it’s a knowing that you maybe have been ignoring. Lucky that it never leaves, it just needs trust to get stronger and more accurate. Mine comes in different places for different alarms. I rarely get a danger alarm, and when I have, I very rarely ignore it. Betrayal alarms just don’t go off for me. I need to learn to listen to them a little closer and use all my good sense to gauge a situation.
3. Get into the crevasses of your character. Lift up the rug, look under the couches, check the bottom of the soap dish- I promise there’s some mold, dust, something has sat too long and festered and bubbled into a mass, and it needs a good scrub down with ammonia and hot water. I used to do a visualization once in a while where I would see a plasma egg. I’m in the plasma egg. On the surface of the plasma egg, and all my knots and masses are crusted and gnarly. I would imagine fresh water washing those knots and masses away, cleaning off any of the knots and masses from my plasma egg, but I stopped doing that shit. It was good for a while, but it kept me in the mind that I could wash away all the knots and masses. I am not in a plasma egg, I’m in the real world and I’m coming in contact with people all the time. I am aware of the parts of me that have been toxic, the parts of me that have hurt people who didn’t deserve it. And I’m cool with those parts, and for my heart, I forgive myself and embrace myself for all my ways. For my heart, I sharpen my character and my tongue because many of my issues come from the fear of others’ reactions when I speak straight words. But for my own freedom from those insecurities, I have to share my truth openly and honestly. Instead of visualizing fresh water washing away my sins, I’m just gonna drink it and ask it to give me clear skin, a flat tummy, and to cleanse my cells and tissues and then I’ma keep it pushing.
4. Remember that all this shit looks like the stock market. It’s up and down, and sometimes that shit crashes. But smart investments put me ahead, so I’m gonna spend my energy wisely, put some into savings, and splurge it on the good stuff. All my energy is going into planning and experiencing some joy and balance. If it doesn’t bring those to me, I’m not spending my energy on it. Putting my energy into savings is like, instead of spending it on revenge, retaliation, anger, frustration, or any of the other taxing emotions that encourage wrinkles, I’m going to pause and put what would have been spent on hours of sadness into reserves and instead, hop into my next joy expenditure whether it’s reading a book, playing with my babies, or watching the birds outside.

I don’t do daily readings for myself like I should, but I’m working on reading my environment like a tarot card. If I was to pull one right now, it would be of a messy room with stuff all over the place, and me standing in the middle of it with that same expression on my face as the character in the post picture. That joint is called Goddess. To me, the Goddess’ expression looks like they decided to give up and not care at the same time. Samella Lewis did this linocut during the Black Arts Movement in 1968. The Black Power Movement of that time came on right after the Civil Rights Movement and black artists were doing more political works, but also more spiritual pieces were coming out too. The focus now is on the literary and performance sides of the BAM, but seeing this and some of her other work got me interested in the visual art of the time. I wonder if she painted Goddess in winter.

Is it Already 2018? Watch Us Get Flyer

Deana Lawson, Wanda and Daughters, 2009

Lawdamercy! Ladamurcy! O! Y’all, has it been an amazing year or WHAT?!?!?!?!?! Let’s recap…

Aside from Awesome Luvvie making the internet with her henceforth renaming of the orange demon who is currently figurehead of the Corporation, and the largest black woman magic event made in this modern era (Dawtas of the Moon Black Witch Convention) black women were doing some very amazing things for the culture, and therefore the world. This year, all the things we called forth in 2017 are bubbling into a solid. What did you do last year to make some rapid, drastic changes? Did you leave your comfort zone to do something new and scary? Good for you, boo, because this year, the word goes from manifestation to fruition. I hate when people talk like that, but I’ma start talking like that. I be like, oh, they not humble. But have you ever looked up the definition of that abomination of a concept? No. Don’t be humble anymore. Be conscientious and empathic, but don’t be humble in 2018. Overestimate yourself, because your shoes are some big shoes to fill.

Y’all, I don’t even celebrate the new year now. Spring solstice is the new year, or whenever it feels like the cold is gone for good for the next few months, that’s when I be like, Happy New Year!!!!! all on my social medias. I don’t even want to talk about anything that happened in 2017. I’m just going through separating the real from the fake. I’m not talking about anybody or anything BUT myself. The real from the fake. Let’s talk about that (in my imaginary talk show host voice. like Oprah). I don’t know where to start. It’s hard because I spent a lot of years being fake. Like, a people pleaser, not wanting to be an asshole, even thought that’s my very nature. People call it an asshole, but you’re really just a straight shooter. Took a long time to give myself permission to do that. And like, things I shoulda known better that I didn’t access to move in my best nature or my best interest. I have made so many mistakes. Embarassing, hilarious, preposterous mistakes. Hurt some good people, hurt some people who deserved it, and hurt myself. Where am I going with this? The point I’m making during this beloved winter  solstice self reflection time is that the fake me is ready to grow up. Taking off all the clothes of the summer to layer up and shake off the depression that usually grips me this time of the year. Some of the things I’ve committed myself to to enjoy this darkness, this cold season…

1. Stretch my hips. I mean, my physical hips, but also my spiritual hips. Some are way ahead of others with the spiritual hip stretch concept, but basically, it’s throwin that ass in a circle for root chakra expansion. There’s a sacred dance in Vodun of Ayiti for Gede Zarenyen with just that going on. The spider pumps her pumpum to spin a web. In real life. And there are different materials for different parts of the web for many spiders, different web sources in the same butt, like compartments of webs, according to a documentary I watched with Pacha (my 3 year old) about spiders. Anyway, the hip stretch is the first step in creating a web to catch food. So i’ma be stretching the hell out of my hips to spin this web to catch this damn food. Hitting up the local dance class, that joint is only $5 on Monday nights. Get in there. Yeah yeah.
2. Instead of saying, “I ain’t shit but at least I know it,” I’m graduating myself to something else. I don’t know what, and I still ain’t shit, but I can say that the low and base parts of my character have matured and are expressing me better and more fully. I know the woman code when I didn’t. I still have a big mouth though, and that’s something I’ve gotten a whole lot better about, and it’s still big. But it’s better. I celebrate all my wins, while simultaneously keeping it funky with myself about my losses. I take knocks sometimes. We all do. Like most of us, most of my knocks are my fault. As a woman, I can admit that now. Accountability. Not as a victim, but as a co-creator with myselves. We tryna be great and ourselves out here in 2018.
3. Writing writing writing. That’s my magic. Everybody has something that strengthens their manifestations- how fast they happen, how accurate they show up to what I desired in the first place. No spellbook, website, or group chant can tell you what YOUR magic is. What works for you is special. Digital presentations where I’ve spent time on procuring images, writing ideas and thoughts down. Writing it down in my journal. Intense and focused amounts of my own Ase (spirit/life force) go into this. What is your own magic? What was your most successful work? That’s probably where it’s at. I have a picture I keep in my mind of me and my man horseback riding at the beach. With the horses in the water. Knee deep. I’ma take the picture and yall gon be like, oh shit. And I’ma be like oh shit, too.

 

If you haven’t yet, listen at the show on Soundcloud, iTunes, and YouTube. Donate at paypal.me/the9minds if you like what you hear and feel fed by it. I welcome feedback too, hit me up at the9minds@gmail.com. Subscribe on here and on Soundcloud too. Share it with everybody you know, while you at it too.

How to Hibernate Like a Rose

Winter Solstice is here y’all. I used to suffer the seasonal depression white folks talk about on the commercials for pills you can take for it. I was in college when it got real bad. Something traumatic happened to me. My parents released me alone into a world I wasn’t ready for, and I still have to atone with myself for letting it bother me for so long.

Winter Solstice is here. In an attempt to be more deliberate about honest expression, I’ma write the way I talk. The way I would say it to you if we were face to face. I’m sitting at the computer with a baby in my lap, thoughts swirling through my head, and no plan for how to climb out of the thought abyss I’m in except to write this piece and hope somebody reads it til the end.

Essentially, what I’m gonna do is set up like, 3 weeks worth of journal entry questions/scenarios for myself. That’s 21 days. While I’m on my fake ass social media fast, which really just means I’m not posting in groups as much or scrolling all day to check up on new randomness in other people’s lives, I’ll take time to write every day on the thoughts I’m tryna mature into awareness by feelin deeper inside.

Here go them entry questions/scenarios

– What and where is my community? What community am I a part of in the real world? Who calls my name at roll? Whose names am I calling at roll?
– How do want it? In 5’s, 10’s, or 20’s?
– Who, what, where, why, or how I’m feeling in this moment in all the senses I’m aware of
– What is expansion? How am I expanding today? I wrote a whole ass post. I’ll write for pay all day, but this is important too.

I could go on and on with questions, and scenarios, but the other real important piece to getting through winter solstice for me is meditation. I don’t call sitting in asana with my eyes closed meditation though. In this language I’d like to forget and replace with vibration and telepathy, meditation means “to deeply focus ones mind for a period of time in silence or with the aid of chanting.” I’m going to make up my own chant. I don’t know what it’s gon be, I’ma just let it happen the way it happen. Before all that, here go my steps:

1. I’ma throw some protection around myself with some wood and my prayer for my ancestors to look out for me.
2. Then I’m going to get on my floor and sit with something that represents each of the elements in front of me. I usually get a stone for earth, incense for air, water, and a candle for fire (lit).
3. I’m going to place my attention on each element, thank them for sustaining me, and my spirit is going to naturally focus in on one. It’s a different one each time, but if I’m focused on it, it’s for a reason. If it’s fire, I know there might be something I’m not speaking up about, or I’m being too lethargic. If it’s water, I know I’m either thirsty, or I need to go with the flow on something I’m resisting. If it’s earth, I know I’m being loose in my movement and need to ground myself. If it’s air, I’m not studying a situation deeply enough, or I need to think harder for a solution, OR let go, and trust that the solution will come in time. My focus on it usually means I’m lacking in it.

I always miss grounding when it gets cold outside, but this winter, being outside in the sun when it’s shining is going to be so important for me. It’s cold, but that sun is going to break up the monotony of these 4 walls.

When I think about rose bushes, how they are all so beautiful, but some are tall and climbing, some are short and broad, and then how each rose is not identical, I think about what maybe each rose thought different to come out unlike the one right next it. I was like, I want to be a blossoming thing. That’s what the lotus is about that yall love so much. Everybody be out here ever awakening. What’s your current blossoming process? I wanna hear it.

 

The photo is a piece by BK artist Mickalene Thomas titled “Don’t forget about me (Keri)”

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