RESEARCH QUESTIONS
What examples do you have for the ways that everyone is connected to everything?
Find examples of symbologies from cultures outside of your own of spectrums and codices:
elements, numbers, colors, frequencies, object portals, relics, dream totems, etc. How does this practice inform and add to your own specturms and codices?
Definitions
Spectrum used to classify something, or suggest that it can be classified, in terms of its position on a scale between two extreme or opposite points.
Codex (codices - plural)
an ancient manuscript text in book form.
an official list of medicines, chemicals, etc.
STUDY GROUP
Thursday, 7/16/21 - 4:00 pm PT / 7:00 pm ET
Bring to Study Group - a sample of what you’ve been working on to share with everyone.
GUEST LECTURES
7/13/21 - 5:30 pm PT / 8:30 pm ET
Topic: Personal & Spiritual Archiving
Lecturer Bio: Edgar Bernal Sevilla is a historian, scholar, and educator from the western edge of the Sonoran Desert. Bernal Sevilla's chief area of historical interest is the impact of colonization on the U.S. Mexico borderlands. Bernal Sevilla hopes to contribute to the creation of a Borderlands Nation through community building in education and the dissemination of regional stories. Bernal Sevilla has a Bachelor of Arts in History from San Diego State University and is a finished thesis away from completing his Master of Arts in Borderlands History with an Emphasis in Public History.
Passcode: @TA=1=#x
7/27/21 - 5:30 pm PT / 8:30 pm ET
Topic: African / African American Divination Methods
Lecturer Bio: noor is a selfsacred person who lives and makes art in West Philly. she's an experimental poet, editor, and educator with an agnostic relationship to truth. her work has been/will soon be published with Belladonna*, Muzzle, DIAGRAM, ANMLY, and others; her chapbook, PRAISE TO LESSER GODS OF LOVE, was published by Glass Poetry Press in 2019. she's interested in making books and other art objects--developing worlds by connecting individual pieces. you can learn more about her processes of expansion and integration on her patreon page and website.
BRING YOUR MOST COMFORTABLE WRITING TOOLS TO THIS LECTURE.
8/3/21 - 5:30 pm PT / 8:30 pm ET
Topic: Toltec-Chichimeca Dream Symbols & Ancestor Elevation
Lecturer Bio: Jen The Rainmaker has been called a Wisdom Carrier and Medicine Carrier by elders in her community. She currently serves as a Native Dream Guide and teaches her Chichimeca Dream Warrior ancestor's secret codexes, ceremonies, dances, dreaming, healing, and manifestation practices at DreamYOU University. It is believed that our dreams create our waking reality and we can create our lives consciously while we sleep. She has dedicated her life to guiding others by teaching them how to plant dreams, reprogram their subconscious while they sleep, and free themselves, their ancestors, their bloodline, and future generations from the trappings of their underworld. IG: JenTheRainmaker
TOOLS
Practice Guideline 1: Experience Your Medicine
Be mindful of the drums in each of the ancestor veneration videos. How can you apply what you see in the videos to your ancestor altar upkeep and ceremonies?
We must breathe deeply and relax into our ancestors arms. A friend of mine shared with me a Peruvian belief that when we sit with the rocks we are sitting with our ancestors. Our ancestors are all around us and within us. We are experiencing them all the time. We are dreaming with them all the time. They are looking for ways to communicate with us. Keep developing your relationship with you ancestors at you altar (indoors and outdoors) and the language of your dreams.
The use of the doll in this video is about self-healing and not about harming another individual.
Practice Guideline 2: Cord Cutting Protocol
“The use of string and knot tying in the traditional healing process found through West and Central Africa as well as throughout the African diaspora; it would appear throughout the black belt South as well as in northern urban black communities until the mid-twentieth century.”
-Katrina Hazzard-Donald, Mojo Workin’ The Old African American Hoodoo System
Review Cord Cutting Protocol
Consider the ways that healing oneself is also healing your ancestors. To let go is always an invitation to be bring something new. Focus on nourishing the self (eating richly, luxurious baths, joyous laughter, sweetest naps, etc) whenever doing cord cutting work. Be mindful of your research questions for this module before engaging in cord cutting. It can cause a long path home to cut the wrong cord. In all healing aspects, focus on the self first and foremost. Everyone else will fall into line as you are more in alignment with your highest path.
Practice Guideline 3: Lucid Dreaming
Listen to C.C.D. recording ft. TBN, a child of Haitians, and a Black therapist.
Jen The Rainmaker may speak more on lucidity during her guest lecture.
Practice Guideline 4: Rest and Reflect
How do you experience lucidity in waking realm? Have you experienced lucidity in dream realm? Lucidity can be awareness - is my dream more tactile, more liquid, more emotional? Lucidity can be experienced through memory - Oh I dream about…
Reflect on what lucidity means for you.