The Rainbow House - Casa Acozamalotl
A podcast from the borderland of spirituality, race, identity, and community, the Rainbow House highlights the voices of mixed race and minority people who choose a spiritual path other than Christianity or generic spirituality. Walk with those of us who are looking at our heritage and hoping to craft healing, fight injustice, and honor our ancestors and ourselves!
The Rainbow House - Casa Acozamalotl
Osea, New York Bruja and Activist (Part 3)
We bring our conversation with Osea to a close! In this episode, I forgot to include an intro but we cover what it means to be a curandera, how not to be a spiritual colonist, more history and politics, and the complexity of making magic.
Mentioned in this episode:
The Invention of Nature: Alexander Von Humboldt's New World by Andrea Wulf
So you know, for people out there who might not be familiar with curanderismo, there's no like central colegia de curanderismo, there is no diploma, there is no star that says you've graduated and now you're a curandero or a curandera. Did you train with people? Did you find them? How did you find people to train with? Did you just read? Was it meditation? Kind of what how did your learning and your path grow over the years? And I realize it's a very large question. So take your time with that one.
Osea:My experience has been people find me as opposed to the other way around. And if I am open to assisting and supporting people and being open about who I am, that opened doors for them to share who they are and what they know with me. And so, by the nature of just, you know, the type of work I do in activism, the type of work I do in community, I just ended up meeting people. You know, one thing leads to another. I get close or we get close, and then we open up and they're willing to show me things. And and not everything has come from people that are from exclusively Mexico, right? Like curanderismo, you see it in Mesoamerica in general. So one of the greatest guides that I ever had in curanderismo is actually Nicaraguan. She's, you know, someone I consider an auntie. And there's a lot that she showed me, right? Has has it also involved going back to Mexico? Has it also involved going back to other places in Latin America and learning from folks? Yes, 100%. There are also people that are curanderas in Puerto Rico, right? There are also people that are curanderas in the Caribbean in general. So it's not a term that is limited to being Mexican or of Mexican ancestry. Like it is a term that can encapsulate all kinds of medicinal and well-being practices that are that have an indigenous history, that in some cases were brought into the Mesti Sahi and continue to exist in Latin America. My exposure has been primarily with people who are Mesoamerican, Central American, and Caribbean peoples, and mostly women that shared with me their practices, which I'm super grateful for. And then I'd say to some extent, because I just also tend to be cerebral, I would just look for all kinds of like books and guides to learn plants, particularly. So there's a lot that you learn from hands-on practice for sure. But there there would be like a lot of guides that I would download, get PDFs. Some of them were actually published by universities in Mexico, which is wild when you think about this. That like university researchers were compiling this, but like, you know, UNAM, shout out to UNAM, the Universidad Autona May Mexico, because their departments have put a lot of work into the preservation of indigenous knowledge and the use of medicinal plants that are native to Mexico. And so there are a lot of texts that I downloaded that went in depth into like the use by different tribes of different plants for medicinal and even spiritual purposes. And that is just some cool shit. Like, you know, when I've had the opportunity to like sit down and read. Obviously, most of that was in Spanish. One thing that I am very hesitant to do, uh, and it goes back to this earlier conversation we had about spiritual bypassing and the commercialization and extraction that happened by Westerners of indigenous practice for the purpose of profit. Like, I am very, very wary of paying a European person or paying a person who is not of you know indigenous or mestizafe descent to train or teach things that are native to our people and native to native people. I know that they exist, I know that there are these several thousand dollar shabanic curandero come get your certificate and your gold star at a retreat in Tulum for a weekend, and I don't fuck with any of that. That is not it. I fuck with the Thias that are in their homes for 30, 40, 50, 60 years cooking up what they've been cooking up and are willing to show me in their kitchen, like what it is that they use and what it is that they do. Like that to me is where that knowledge really resides is it's an ancestral wisdom, it's in regular people that have held on to these traditions and are passing them down in their families and they're passing them down to people that are willing to listen. I've been very hesitant to go into spaces that are remotely commercialized. I don't trust them. I'm just gonna be honest, right? I trust what the tías and the abuelas are willing to share with me. And abuelos, like every now and then there are abuelos that also will show some of the things that they do because I have a sharp resistance to the way that this has been distilled, commercialized for capitalistic purposes. What are they doing or have they done to give back to the communities where these practices originated? One need only look at maybe the case study of what happened to um María Sabina in Oaxaca, who shared her knowledge of medicinal mushrooms and many other plants. If there ever was a cautionary tale for what comes out of sharing your knowledge in a way that allows it to be commercialized, capitalized upon, and just how that leads to a shit show for a native community, the story of Maria Sabina is is is an incredible cautionary tale.
Nicte-Ha:Do you feel like if you have a curandera or curandera who is charging for services? Right. Obviously, there's a difference between the $5,000 shamanic retreat at Tulum and then somebody who's a practitioner, you know.
Osea:I mean, you're paying for their time, their knowledge, their experience, and their energy. So it's energetic exchange. It would be wholly uncool for you to take up somebody's time, energy, resource, knowledge, take advantage of them for a couple of hours, and be like, cool, thanks. Right? If that person's not like your immediate family member or somebody you have like a really loving relationship with, that just seems fucked up. That's like telling somebody to come fix your roof. The roofer works for 10 hours, and you're like, listen, I appreciate you, it's all vibes.
Nicte-Ha:Like so the distinction is if somebody is if it's commercialization, if it's performative, but if you're actually genuinely working, which kind of the distinction happens maybe with the practitioner themselves. For example, my experience, right, could have been very much performative. Like it was part of like a package tour deal to Bali, right? It was like my day of wellness, okay? And I got real sarcastic about it. And then, like I said, it kicked my ass.
Osea:Who did it to you, a native to the place? Yes. Was a person who did it to you, somebody that came up in the tradition.
Nicte-Ha:Oh, yes.
Osea:Okay, well, like, shout out to them.
Speaker:And he was and he's been doing this for a very long time, and he got very well paid for his work, and then that that to me is the as he should.
Osea:Okay. You told me that it was some guy named Steve who, you know, did a retreat for for a weekend and is like, yeah, I'm a motherfucking Balinese shaman now. Um, you know, and Steve is just plying people with hallucinogens and mangoes.
Nicte-Ha:Oh no, there were no hallucinogens involved, although honestly, I it would have been more understandable. I see your point. I see your point. Yes, yes. I just wanted to make that distinction clear because I feel like some people will be like, oh, well, then that means that you know, people shouldn't charge me for the spiritual healing or for this or for this ritual.
Osea:Listen, it's energetic exchange. In Buru Hiria, we call it licencia. You pay your license, right? Because if you don't, it's going to be sucked out of you. That's the part that is like, all right, listen, man, you're paying your energetic exchange because otherwise I could just tap this out of you, right? And dry you up to charge you for it in different ways. So if you don't want to pay with your life force, then maybe you should pay with some other thing, an energetic exchange. So, yeah, I think that that's the point that I'm making with anybody that wants to do, let's say, shamanic healing practices. I just, you know, use some discernment. Like I said, if the person is claiming to practice a practice that is not of their heritage, that's not a place where they have, you know, or it's not a tradition that they have spent an extensive amount of time in, that they have been embedded in, you know what I'm saying, that they have some humility around, that if you get any of those, like, mm-hmm, this sounds like a colonizer vibes, then it's probably a colonizer, and you're gonna get a very different experience. And I'm not saying that people from the place or that people from sort of the points of origins don't take advantage of people, they absolutely fucking do, they take advantage of their ignorance, and some people might think of that as being reparations. So I'm not here to shit on their game either. I'm just saying use discernment, be mindful. If somebody sounds like appealing to you because they look and sound a little bit too much like you as an outsider to the culture, and you're like, oh, but I'm an American, and this guy's an American, but he's in whatever the fuck place, but he's in Tulum, but like he speaks English and like he's from California, and you know, like we really just vibe. Um, so go get coffee. But maybe that's not the person, you know what I mean?
Nicte-Ha:That's that impression was way too on point, girl. That was that impression was way too on point. Listen, I I'd be fucking I feel attacked, honestly, as a Californian. I feel attacked who's been to Burning Man, I feel attacked.
Osea:Listen, I here's one thing I'm gonna take responsibility for. I will take responsibility for having been in like spiritual retreat spaces, um, and just fucking them all up. For for the purpose of like truth, like for the purpose of honesty, you know. So let's spice this up a little and and just inject a little bit of honesty into this situation. Um, and maybe some muertos. I don't know. You know, let's make it a party, like for realsies though. It's like, oh, we're gonna we we're gonna call this shamanism, like check this shit out. I want my beer. And yeah, not everybody's ready.
Nicte-Ha:In fact, hold my beer and pour some out because los muertos. Listen, they're thirsty.
Osea:It's about to get it's about to get live. And so I've been in those type of situations where you know the people that organized those type of events ended up hiding in a stairwell, deeply uncomfortable. Because some of them just ply people with hallucinogens that make them more pliable to influence, and then what they create is more or less a psychological victim that that person begins to associate the euphoria of what they experience on the hallucinogen with the practitioner, and so they just go, Oh my god, like everything is difficult in my life. I just need to go to this person. And because that person is plying them with a hallucinogen, which by the way, many of them are 100% legal, like plant medicine is extensive, doesn't only include the ones that are like classified as controlled substances. There are lots of plants out there and other types of ingestibles that can give you a euphoric experience. And there are plenty of people out here that are aware of that, and they are doing some real spiritual bypassing, charging people money, calling it ritual, calling it, you know, sacred whatever medicine. And what they're doing is they're creating a bunch of people that are chained to them, energetically chained to them psychologically, because somebody has never experienced that before. They now think that that person is the guru and is the answer instead of really looking inwardly and questioning their own thoughts, processes, and behaviors. Healing and growth is not always easy, it's not always comfortable, but I firmly believe it always involves you. It's not something that we put on the pedestal of somebody else's lap and go, I need you to fix me. Right? Like you need to fix you. Now, is it totally reasonable to engage in more people to help you fix you? Yeah, wow, a bunch of us are out here. You know what I'm saying? Because guidance is always an important thing, especially for those of us that come from traditions that believe in collective wisdom and collective well-being. You go to the collective to help support your well-being and you contribute to collective well-being. We're not out here in this, like, you know, American or rugged individualism like mentality of wellness. We believe that the collective is part of what supports our well-being, and we support the well-being of the collective, right? And there are too many folks in healing spaces. I'm like throwing up air quotes here, that you know, they want to, they want to disconnect the practices from that understanding. They want to make it individualistic, they want to make it so that, like, no, you're only gonna get here through my 12-step program, you're only gonna get here through my retreat, you're only gonna get here through this.
Speaker:By my notebook, here's here's a coaster and an inspirational poster. Right. And this just patently false.
Osea:Anybody who is secure in what they do is not gonna lash out at you if you want to explore other options, if you want to dive into things yourself, they can counsel you, they can advise you, they can tell you what the pros and cons might be of you trying something different. Sometimes people maybe in an attempt to spiritually bypass, they go get a consulta with one type of practitioner. They don't like what the practitioner says, so then they go to a different type of practitioner and then a third practitioner and then a fourth practitioner. And I'm like, okay, be careful that this does not lead you to spiritual psychosis when you're involving this many entities. Be mindful of why you're so quick to reject what one practitioner has said. Is it that you're just looking for somebody to tell you that you don't have to do things differently? Everything you've gotta you've gotta approach it from a position of discernment. That sometimes a practitioner is gonna be really real with you and they're gonna tell you something that makes you uncomfortable, and they're gonna tell you something about yourself that feels uncomfortable to have to deal with that truth, and it feels uncomfortable to have to change that truth. But if what you do is like, well, let me bounce around to three or four other practitioners to see if they tell me something nice about me, they like validate everything that I'm doing and don't tell me to change, that is not necessarily the answer. I think that every situation is different. I'm not a fan of practitioners that go and tell a person, oh my god, so many people are cursing you, and I need like a thousand dollars to like buy a million crystals and all these herbs. And if you don't do this, like starting this weekend, your dog is gonna die. But it exists and people fall for it. The chicanery is real, right? So I don't know.
Nicte-Ha:Honestly, that's been my my hesitancy. I've been interested. The people I know who do this kind of thing, like my mom, for example. My mom only does this kind of thing when she's directly asked. And she doesn't, as far as I know, take any money for it. And it is only when somebody approaches her and asks her for specifically for work. Or I sometimes ask her for good weather because she always delivers. I don't know how.
Osea:I love that for you guys.
Nicte-Ha:I did it one time, girl. Let me tell you what happened. It was at Obama's inauguration, and I told my mom, I was like, it's gotta be good weather tomorrow. She was like, okay. She was like, well, let's do this. What do you want? And I said, I want it to be clear, and I want it to be what did I say? I wanted it to be sunny and I wanted it to be clear. She was like, that's it. And I was like, yeah, I think that's it. I just, you know, I don't want it to rain and I want it to be sunny. She was like, okay. So it was clear, it was sunny, and it was a high of eight degrees.
Osea:So I almost gave myself for contact for the faces with my hands. And I'm like, well. She's like, boy, you you got what you're guys. That's why I say, like, you know, this is why when you when you do a consulta, man, you gotta be real specific with your asks and your questions. Because, you know, there's a lot of like really beautiful, let's say, trickster entity energies out there that are like, oh, that's what you want. I got you. That is exactly what you're gonna get. And then afterwards, you're like, fuck my life. Why didn't I why didn't I think?
Nicte-Ha:So my specify. My one more story. My brother and sister-in-law were getting married. Summer. I was invited, it was the first time I was meeting Andrew's family. Call my mom. The weather report was not auspicious because it was like the south and it was July, so it was gonna be hot and rainy, and it was just not looking good. So I said, Hey mom, can you help me out? And she said, sure. There were multiple tornadoes in the area that night, none of them came anywhere near where we were. Every single hotel in the city we were in lost power except for the wedding parties hotel. It didn't rain until after the wedding was over and everyone was back at the hotel.
Osea:And I was like, Okay, thanks, Mom! I hope she got like a lot of rest and soup and like warm blanket rest after doing some work like that. And I only say it because whenever you're working, at least in my path, right? Whenever you're working with natural elements, like natural elements are just and we're like pew and they're like and so when you're working to let's say synchronize natural elements in the favorite direction that you want them to move in, like sometimes that's even harder than dealing with people because natural elements are like big boom energy, right? So I just hope that mommy got lots of hugs and naps and soups and after whatever all that was, because sinking and bending, you know, you've seen Avatar, right? Like Avatar is freaking cool and also in some ways spot on. It's like if you're sinking and moving energy for like wind, water, etc.
unknown:Wow.
Speaker 1:Channeling that kind of energy is a lot. It's a lot. Shout out to the druids. It's they've been doing it for warfare, but uh, it's a lot.
Nicte-Ha:Yeah. No, my mom's got an amazing story about she's gonna be on this podcast. I'm gonna invite her to talk about her journey because she's got a very interesting story about multiple interactions that I think are just interesting. I don't know, interesting is such a lame word. I want to tell the story because I want you to hear the story. And but I feel like it's I probably should just let her tell the story first.
Osea:Your mom is very cool. She's a very, very, very cool human being.
Nicte-Ha:Yeah. Yeah. So the problem is that when I I participated in this cura with her, but like she's like, I can't really teach you what I do because I don't really do it. She's like, I just ask. And I was like, anyone in specific? She's like, I mean, I have a book that like the curandera that our family worked with gave me. And I say these prayers, and that's what I do when somebody asks me for a cuda.
Osea:I love that for her.
Nicte-Ha:And I was like, okay.
Osea:Noticed that a $5,000 retreat to Tulum was not involved.
Nicte-Ha:No, no.
Speaker 1:But but there were some kind of that type.
Nicte-Ha:It was yes, and her initiation was not, it was. I just want you to hear her story in person as she tells it. But I, yeah, it's one of those things where I was participating, and I could not, for the life of me, if you were like, I want this. It was me and my sister and my mom, and we were doing a quuda for my close relative, and it was an incredibly powerful experience. You know, could I do it? Probably not, but I don't have her experience, right? But it was also one of those things where it's like, I don't think there's no script for it. There's no she has the little book and she has the prayers, but the but that's just such a small part of it. So I think I've just always been intrigued, you know, by how people come to this and do it and have confidence in it. Right.
Osea:I mean, think I think it can take a lot of different twists and turns. It's all, I mean, I am a believer, and it all goes back to Source, right? And that Source is also having the most cool, most fun video game experience with all of us. We're all so thoroughly entertaining. We are like the coolest version of The Sims, right? So I am I'm a big believer in that ultimately you can all tie it back to Source. It's all going so you you can approach this from a lot of different angles and it's gonna work, right? You don't have to work with a specific entity, you don't have to work with a specific divinity, right? Like there've been so many wars fought on this planet over religions and whose gods are stronger, and you know, who the true god is, or who and I'm like, We're like Sims, we're so entertaining. If you were to look at us from space, you would just see this really cool massive planet full of water and clouds and land and be like, are they seriously fighting over what to call their gods? It sounds like little kids playing with G.I. Joes being like, my G.I. Joe is stronger than yours is. It just sounds a little absurd, right? That we kill people and we destroy nations over this.
Nicte-Ha:Well, and the fact that the fact that they think the creator of the universe, if there is a creator, which I don't whatever, the fact they think their creator of the universe, who created the horseshoe nebula that's like millions of light years across, create all the infinite space, and hydrogen and suns gives a shit whether or not you have sex with whoever, or that you're wearing underwear of a certain like it's just bizarre to me.
Osea:It is very bizarre to me, too. I'm like, do you really think that that which created all the beauty and complexity of existence was like, yo, but let me be petty though? Like on the seventh day, let me be petty, you know, in in the particular belief systems that I follow. There's a belief in overarching mega mega source energy, and then energies that are not as big as that one, but have a little more personality in terms of like being more like us, and ones that have also natural affinities, right? Energies that represent natural elements, and they have names, and one could even argue they have personalities, and I do think that that is because human beings give anthropomorphic characteristics to things, and that we tend to affinity ourselves with what matches our own humanity. I'm sure that the Greek gods were a vibe because they also just exhibited so many elements of human nature, right? And that can be said about the the divinities and the deities that exist in a lot of different world belief systems, is that we are seeing ourselves in archetypes, we are seeing ourselves in these pantheons, we are seeing the best and the worst and the interesting of humanity and the lessons that they teach. And I personally, you know, anthropological perspective, think that is so freaking cool. Do you think that's so cool?
Nicte-Ha:Speaking of that, I've seen in the last 20 years this increasing interest, and unfortunately in many places it's tied in with nationalism and in some cases white supremacy, but this increasing interest in native religion revival. So there's, you know, Greek revivalists who are re-engaging with the Greek gods. There are Norse pagans, many of whom are fighting. I want to just be clear, they're fighting very actively against nationalism and white supremacy in their movement. Uh, there's also Eastern European pagan revivalism, and a lot of these seem to go hand in hand with a nationalist, racialized view. And so I'm just wondering, you know, do you think that Latin American spirituality, you know, because I know there's like there's also Aztech revivalism, you know, Dansa Azteca has really expanded from just sort of like a cultural art form into its own religious practice, right? And so in general, I I think it's it's very interesting to see people moving away from Christianity, away from from that movement, and looking at their religious traditions, but at the same time, you know, I am disturbed by the links in many of these movements with nationalism and with exclusion and a reliance on genetic purity.
Osea:Right. I mean, I'll think about it like this to what degree are you celebrating and exploring heritage that was stamped out by colonialism and trying to create a hegemony around power, colonialism, capitalism, etc. Okay, like I'm down for whatever is saying, no, no, no, no, we're gonna go back and reclaim what has been, you know, natively ours and traditionally ours before these systems came and erased culture and history and practices and views, which they did, right? That's the history of the empires, is how the empires colonized and conquered each other and tried to erase the practice and existence of what all came before them. Okay, so the degree to which what you're doing is, as you're saying, reviving what is beautiful and meaningful and powerful, and you know, tracks back in our our DNA and our ancestors. Cool, cool, cool, cool, cool. All right, you want to do it for the new world version of further conquest, further imperialism, further colonialistic interest, fuck all that. No, it's not for fascism. Okay, thanks, bye. So I think that that is where I draw that line is if what you are doing is again building community, building collective awareness, building collective collaboration and cooperation in healthy and balanced ways, that sounds dope as fuck. If you're doing it to then just give yourself an excuse to, you know, get together with the boys for fascism, but you want to call it, but you want to call it, you know, some type of spiritual tradition, I think that's where we have to draw the line, right? Is this leading towards fascism? Is it leading towards, you know, further imperialism and colonialism and xenophobia? Or is it leading to balance within the collective? Right. And you're gonna get a lot of disagreement, even like, you know, there's no such thing as Latin American spirituality, there's no such thing as like Latin American. Poof. Latin America exists as a concept because the Spanish came and colonized a bunch of very, very, very different people, very, very, very different cultures, and then put them under the banner of the Spanish Empire. And then in the course of the years, they just went to rip off that yoke and you know claim back their independent yet mysticized cultures because they were not living in vacuums. The Taínos were traveling between the Caribbean and the Mexican peninsula.
Nicte-Ha:Yeah, but I also I'm not sure. I mean, like the the you know, the rebellions against Spain and the independence movements in a lot of countries in what we call Latin America. Thank you for the gentle correction. But a lot of the countries that we call Latin America, you know, there were movements that were driven by and involved indigenous leaders and communities and the oppressed, enslaved people, black people. And there are also lots of them that were led by primarily white European landowners who did not want the criollos wanted to keep their own power and they didn't want to give it to the enslaved, the indigenous. They wanted to take it from Spain. Why do I have to give you my money? I want to keep it all. And so it's interesting. I read a book about Alexander von Humboldt's amazing book called The Invention of Nature. Everyone should read this book. Anyways, he was a friend with my god Bolivar. I was about to listen, I was about to go down the road. He was friends with Bolivar, and he told Bolivar, he said, racism and class is a problem, and it is going to fuck you up. If you if you seek independence now without fixing that shit, you're gonna fuck it up. And Bolivar ignored him.
Osea:Promises were made. Promises were made.
Nicte-Ha:And they were not kept, and it created so many problems rolling forward. So it's interesting. I mean, I I agree that to a greater extent than the United States, by far, countries in what we call Latin America have involved and had indigenous and mestizo people at every level of government and and the power structure. And the power structure though remains white, you know, up until like very recently. I mean, and you even have like one of the weird things is like looking at South America and looking at Uruguay and being like, nobody ever talks about this place. And then you're like, that's because they genocided all of the indigenous people in this area, and everyone who lives here is European descended. And then people are like, oh, well, they're the most, you know, they're the most uh stable country in South America because nobody talks about them. And I'm like, so they had the most successful genocide on the continent. It's astonishing.
Osea:When I'm sitting here, you know, not responding, I'm like, because I'm just sipping my tea.
Speaker:I know.
Osea:Like, I'm just sipping my tea on all of that. Like, the the one only needs to look to Haiti to see how much it threatens the hegemony black people and brown people and indigenous people be riling up and and are coming into their own stability and success without the need of whiteness, without the need of colonialism, without the need of, and they're like, no, we will bury you, we will bury you in debt, we will bury you in the world.
Nicte-Ha:We will spend 400 years cutting you off from any access to capital, assistance, partnership, development. We will go after that's the amazing thing is that they have gone after Haiti so hard.
Osea:Listen, the purposeful destabilization is real, and it's not just Haiti. You can look at this in the African continent with France, you know what I'm saying? With the Dutch, with Israel now, right? Like it's it's not just a standalone one-off with Haiti, unfortunately, you know, and there are some countries that are adamantly taking a stand against that and booting out all of this influence that continues to try to control and destabilize them, right? And keep them from having autonomy over their own development. You see that in just like countries that want to shake off the frunk, right? It's it's a frunk that's used in West Africa, but there are there are countries right now that are like, no, fuck all this. We're gonna go back to our own currency. So, you know, again, it's like so many different podcasts and episodes could come out of these.
Nicte-Ha:This is why we need to have our own podcast, girl. We need to get on and just talk. You realize that now I am running at three hours of footage, just us talking. This is gonna be like a six-part series at this point. Yep. Yep.
Osea:You know, I mean, this is what we can have people call in. Give them a give them the talking to of all this shit that I miss from college, to be honest. It's like I can go into these deep dives for fun all the time. But in, you know, in my in my real world life, there are definitely moments where our friends are like, yo, you're doing the most right now. Like, you're thank you for the TED talk, but like, I just I just wanted to hear about this one thing. I just wanted an answer to this one question. And thank you for going into a deep dive of like the history and the politics of X situation. And I'm like, yeah, my bad.
Nicte-Ha:That's me all the time with everything. This poor woman asked me a question at a birthday party about school lottery, and I talked for 20 minutes about like the process and why and which and how, and she got this look on her face, and I was like, Oh no! And I went to my husband and I said, Honey, do I just like talk at people? He's like, Well, maybe you could just ask like more questions, and I was like, But people, they ask questions, and then there's an answer, but there's like context that you need for the answer that they need to hear all of it.
Osea:I tell you, and this is also, you know, like the teacher in me, the educator in me is that like my conclusion for this is like I just need to. I've been working on platforming a lot of these, you know, TED talks about these different topics, just so I can preserve them for kids, so I can preserve them for young people, so this information that will probably be, if not already, banned.
Nicte-Ha:Dude, I actually considered starting a list and ordering books, but I'm like, these books are gonna disappear.
unknown:Yep.
Osea:These books are going to get disappeared, they're going to be banned not directly, but suddenly they're gonna be unavailable. Amazon can't send them to you, blah, blah, blah. Right. So, my my plan is to preserve a lot of these histories, issues, discussions, challenges, um, in digital format so that the kids and young people of the future have access to it because they're going after higher education, right? They're going after trying to exercise control on K-12 education, exercise control over university education. They want to audit every single unit, they want to audit every single course, they want to have control over what can and can't be said, what can and can't be taught, what can and can't be questioned. And I'm like, oh, preserve all of it, preserve all of it so that our children, our children's children can have these kind of conversations, can have these kind of debates, can have these kind of opportunities to, you know, to again to practice discernment, to exercise their, you know, problem solving and critical reasoning skills. Because that is the sincere worry that I have that, you know, all the cool spiritual talk aside, like part of what being a guerrera means to me is like being a guerrera for my children's future, for the future of children, to preserve the integrity of them being able to question the world around them, for them being able to hear different sides of a story, to not buy the safely packaged propagandized version of what they are taught or what they see around them or what they see in digital space, right? That sometimes becomes an echo chamber for certain perspectives. It's very important to me to preserve the integrity of critical reasoning and recognizing that you know when people want to paint, that there was a villain and there was a hero in history, there's probably more to that story, right? To the victor goes the spoils more often than not, and to the victor goes telling the story in perpetuity, which is often maybe not the whole story. And so I think that that is something that I I value heavily. Again, going back to these ideas of balance and justice, is that you know, what we're doing right now, that that can continue to exist, that that will not be disappeared along with everything else that they want to plunge into darkness.
Nicte-Ha:I mean, it starts early too, you know, talk about good guys and bad guys and good words and bad words. And I told my kids today, I said, there are no bad words except the ones you use to hurt other people. And that's using your words in a way to cause injury. Right? There are impolite words, there are words that have a lot of bad history to them, there are words, there's lots of these things, right? But you're not just because you said, oh shit, that's not a bad word. Is it impolite, out of used out of context, maybe not appropriate? Fine. Do you maybe want to reserve your swearing for situations that call that need that emphasis? That's fine. I'm not gonna call them bad words. And then the other day my daughter said something about bad guys and going to jail, and I said, Well, I was like, how do you know who the bad guys are? And she was like, Well, they're the people that that break the law. And I'm like, Well, but who makes the law? Right?
Osea:And so it's wild how kids get conditioned to think these things when we're not the ones that teach them that, right? This is one of my huge concerns in education is that even if you're the parent are not teaching these things, somebody is teaching them.
Nicte-Ha:It comes learning it from somewhere, they learn it from their friends, right? Both my kids went through this. That's a boy thing, that's a girl thing. Even though we had never ever talked about boy things and girl things, and we pushed back on it, and now there is some nuance there. But I do think there is this period where if that kind of binary thinking gets reinforced, and they're saying, Yes, you want to be a good boy, or you want to be a good girl, and that means that you always listen and you always obey, and you're enforcing that binary thinking of good people and bad people. And if I act this way, I am bad, or I am good, then I think that that's when you roll forward, and then you're it's easy for you to say those are just bad people, and you don't question why they're easy to dehumanize those people, very easy to do.
Osea:It becomes easy to strip their due process and their right and deport them to torture prisons. Yeah, because you just say, Hey, that person doesn't deserve any shred of decency and humanity because I have designated them an official bad person. Yeah, no, it's a really slippery slope, which is why I feel like it's so important from the time kids are very young to again teach critical reasoning, to teach more complex ways of accepting the world and not letting them fall into these logic traps of, like you said, binary reasoning. That's also why I'm a big fan of like unschooling and and you know, different types of practices that call into question the way that kids in educational systems are often taught more so to be compliant than they are to think for themselves.
Nicte-Ha:Do you feel like that is something that kind of evolved naturally from your experiences over time? Do you still work sometimes with Celtic entities? Or do you ever use the word gods, or are you sort of like all that is not really useful when you're talking about things in on a spiritual level?
Osea:Great question. I'd I'd say that I well, some entities are just going to have their own name within a culture because it follows the language of that culture, right? So when we're talking about, you know, who a Sky Father might be, right, in the sense of a Sky Father, that might have different names across different traditions. If we're talking about who is the guardian at the gate of the dead, right, at the entrance to the cemetery, who watches over and has dominion over armies of dead or the souls of the dead, like we're talking about entities that they have a name, for example, in Celtic practices, they also have a name in Afro-Caribbean practices. And I want to be careful and not say that they are exactly the same, right? Because the beliefs do bear distinctions between them, but it's it's also pretty interesting and surprising how much sometimes they bear in common. So I will say that my practice now and today, if I were to travel or be in a space that would be kind of the dominion of Celtic entities and deities, then hell yeah, I'm gonna show respect on that home turf to them always, right? That deference because I am in their world, I am in their space. And when I have been in spaces that still connect back to them because they are the spaces that the diaspora came to, where the Irish and Celtic diaspora came to and established themselves, then again, I go back to like, okay, well, this is also part of your dominion because your energy continues to be here and preside here. And everything that I've learned from those traditions have certainly helped me in navigating certain worlds that they more specifically go in depth into. And the example I'm going to use is the Fey. So Kelter traditions have a lot to say about the world of the Fe and how to take caution when it comes to dealings with the world of the Fey and what you know, what the trees teach us, what the plants and the berries teach us, or even what man-made materials like iron have to do with that world. So I'm never going to forget, discount, or give less respect to what I have learned over time in those traditions, like you were referencing druidic traditions, etc. That's powerful and helpful information, especially when you're teaching children and you're teaching them about these worlds, and you're teaching them to be cautious if they can experience or do experience these worlds as being very real. I will continue to teach my children, right? Those kinds of levels of awareness. But I'd say that the majority of what I work in and with now tends to be more from the either the Afro-Caribbean practice from Palo or that which is ancestral and Mesoamerican, like personal to me. But it's in no way discounting the importance of what I learned and was a part of like earlier in my life. It just I think I also shifted where I moved, shifted geographically who I'm surrounded by, and that makes a world of difference. The more that I am surrounded by diasporic people who are Afro-Caribbean, is also going to shift who I'm working with and who I'm talking to and who I'm around, because we also tend to share that more in common. So a lot of the practitioners that are now a part of my family and a part of my immediacy, they're Afro-Caribbean practitioners. So if I were, I don't know, surrounded by Druidic practitioners in my immediacy and my family and my you know close circles, then maybe that would speak to where I would continue to be, but I'm not. So and then as to like the distinctions you were making, kind of in hierarchy.
Nicte-Ha:I mean well, in hierarchy, maybe the wrong word, because I don't want to, you know, like I think that thinking of a hierarchy of beings is a very like Western European idea of like there is God over all, and then there's angels underneath that, right? So it's like a very hierarchical view of things. So not necessarily is there hierarchy, just like, is it useful for you to talk about gods, or is it just sort of the experience of them? In my experience, limited as it might be, they're so big that it's not really a useful distinction to make to call them gods and distinguish between all of them.
Osea:It doesn't help. Well, I'd say that I I experience, you know, the different entities with their energetic uniqueness, you know, and so let me take a step back. So like in Congo spirituality, you have you have a sky father, right? And his name is Sambia or Insambi, right? And he is referenced in greetings, he's referenced in a lot of spiritual teachings that when you're talking about doing things in light, samby or in sambi is referenced, and so there are even greetings that we have in the religion that are basically saying, like, may Sambia bless you. But the religion also acknowledges the opposite side, and not just the dark side, it also recognizes the feminine side, just as there is a father, just as there is a male force, there are also female forces, so there's a sky mother, right? And she's also super important, she's also acknowledged, it's a bit different than Abrahamic faiths that only tended to acknowledge a male divine entity, and the Kikongol beliefs involve a sky mother and a sky father, both. I'll start there. They also acknowledge within the cosmology uh a force of darkness, but again, that's not necessarily to be simplified as a force of evil, it's way oversimplifying. The teachings teach about balance in natural things. A seed has to remain in darkness for a certain extent of time before it is prepared as a seed to then grow above ground. That doesn't make the darkness of the underworld where mycelium exists bad. It is a part of its process. The decay process is not a bad thing, even though we associate it with death. It is not bad, it is not evil, it is part of life cycles, right? So the belief system that that I engage in when I talk about Halo beliefs or kikongo beliefs, I'm talking about balance, I'm talking about natural cycles, I'm talking about ways of seeing the world in a cosmology where nature and nature's forces are all part of this balance. And so the idea of something being, I don't know, like demonic or evil, or like the way that like some Western religions want to paint things that are quote unquote darkness. I'm like, no, that's not a fair assessment. That sounds like a way of Christianity trying to wipe out an indigenous belief. That sounds like a way of Christianity trying to scare people away from their native beliefs. But one of the things that happened when when Kikongo beliefs encountered the the Catholic Portuguese is they tried to say, oh, well, your insomnia, that's our Christian God, right? But then they wanted to take some of the other entities that were believed in and either assign them to saints or assign them to the devil. And that's like a way oversimplification of you know what these were beliefs were. Zambia is a representation of everything, everything that exists in nature, and that includes the dead, but that doesn't have to be a bad thing. Like again, it's a very western belief to think of the dead as being like evil and scary and oh my god, they're gonna harm us and like all these things. And I'm like, but you don't feel that way about your dead grandmother who was super sweet and made you cupcakes. You probably think of your dead grandmother who you loved with a lot of endearment, right? So if you can apply that to people in your family or people in your immediacy that you loved and then passed away, and you can think of them as still, if you can believe that they continue to exist, think of them as being helpful or protecting you or watching over you or watching from heaven or whatever beliefs you have, you can stretch your belief a bit to understand that we're all existing in different dimensions and planes of existence. And what what Falo does is it brings and connects us together across dimensional planes. That instead of believing that we are eternally separated after death, no, we don't believe that. We believe that that deceased ancestors, as an example, deceased spirits can have a relevance in our existence right now because we're continuing to exist across planes of existence and can connect with each other. And maybe for some people that sounds scary, but it doesn't sound scary to me. It feels like having a pretty cool crew of who looks out for you and who guides you, and who is there sharing an interest in your well-being, and sometimes also who's teaching you hard lessons, that part too, right?
Speaker:But I say it says I rule deep. I got a deep.
Speaker 1:I rule listen, you ain't never lie. Yep, I do, and I'm real hype about that.
Nicte-Ha:There are so many things I could talk about with you, and I know I would love to talk with you again and dip into you know your wisdom in the future. But we were talking about what you might want to bring out and talk to people about from your heart, just to close this out.
Osea:Yes. So I think that there are a lot of folks out there that are in this in the diaspora specifically, that are in this space of like spiritual questioning where maybe you're looking for somebody to guide you, maybe you're looking for a place to be guided, and some of us with good intentions spend our money and our time and energy knocking on doors that are not truly gonna assist us. So, yeah, I'm talking shit about the five thousand dollar retreats to Tulum, but also whatever that guru-dumb business model is, you don't need all of that. You need to listen inside, you need inside yourself, you need to self-reflect, you need to find ways of growing in connection with elders that are practicing these practices and demonstrate a level of knowledge and experience with them, that they're not trying to hook you in, they're not advertising their services to try to get a million god children under them. They really are just sincere in what they do and are willing to teach and share with you. And does that sometimes involve money and energetic exchange? Yeah, I mean, like private tutoring involves money, right? And elder is not always grandparent age, sometimes elder is just somebody that's more experienced in a tradition than you are. But there are plenty of them or us or however you want to see it existing in space in our communities, in di spork communities, that you can find and that you can work with. You don't have to go on a $10,000 trip halfway across the world to find this. You can find this in your own community, in your own backyard, in people that share identities with you. I think that sometimes it does take a bit of work, right, to get to know them and develop trust with them. But they do exist here, they do exist where we are. Um and I think also just having a level of humility is like you won't know it all in one day, you won't know it all in a week. If anybody tells you that they're lying to you, it takes practice, understanding, work, observing. We understood what an apprenticeship was years ago, right? And so sometimes being able to grow in these spiritual practices, especially if we're going to talk about closed traditions in Buddhairia, like, yeah, you're gonna be an apprentice for a while. You're gonna be training and learning under elders for a while, but that's not a bad thing. That's so you learn to do these things responsibly. So, again, I would just encourage people think carefully about who is either trying to sell you a promise of spiritual bypassing because that's not it, right? Find people that are honest, that are gonna be real with you, that are willing to tell you to your face what's up with honesty. That's the kind of person you treasure. If they have really slick commercials and social media presence, think about that because some of the best elders, Palerinos, Mailerinas, people that I've met in these traditions, they're busy doing the work. And they're busy just living a great life with their family. The the the proof, so to speak, is in the type of peace that they experience as a human. If they're terrified of you having other spiritual friends or having other spiritual elders or having other spiritual, you know, cousins or whatever you want to call all of us that are friends with each other, that should also be a red flag of a narcissistic relationship. So, in the same ways that you would avoid a toxic relationship that is romantic, just be careful in spiritual practice to also avoid those types of toxic relationships to try to be controlling of you. Trust yourself, trust that sometimes you will feel like you know nothing and that you have a lot to grow, and that's okay. But trust your gut instinct that when somebody feels like they are overselling you or trying to control you or trying to manipulate you, listen to that voice inside that's like, let me step back from this. Because it is really important that the people that you ultimately do grow with in spiritual caminos are also mature people, are also people that their energy is going to bring positivity to your life, going to bring balance, and going to bring a form of evolution and development. Folks are out here that know how to act right and have trust that they don't have to be all shiny selling $10,000 packages abroad. You can find them here, but it's a matter of recognizing their worth and recognizing what they have to teach you.
Nicte-Ha:Thank you, Osea, for teaching us all and for sharing your wisdom. And just so much gratitude for being a part of this and for being willing to be on my podcast and talk about all of this. Because I think we did some deep work. And I'm I'm excited. I'm excited for people to hear our conversation and to hear what you have to say in your in your perspective because this was exactly what I wanted to bring in my podcast to other people who have been like me and felt out of place and a little bit at sea. And I think that your words and your wisdom bring a sense of hope and purpose and direction for other people, for me. So thank you so much.
Osea:That's so nice to hear. It's true. Sambia Kutare, may Sambia bless and look over you.
Nicte-Ha:Thank you, Chica. This marks the end of our three-part series with Osea, Bruja, and Curandera. When I did a card shuffle for today's posting, I got Tonatio, the Sun. According to this deck, the sun represents the ending and the beginning of a cycle, which seems appropriate. The sun is warmth, light, life giving, like the words that we have from Osea. So if you like what you've heard, follow and share this podcast for more interviews with artists, spiritual seekers, thinkers, healers, and other folks on this long strange camino with us. Plasakamati
