spiritual lineage

I have also learned so much about Espiritismo from working with Nicole Novaton (a Lucumi Priestess of Oshun) and through the literature of Brujo San Luis.

Tarot was primarily a self-study journey for me. My early teachers were authors, especially:

Theresa Reed

Rachel Pollack

Eileen Connelly Lindsey Mack

Sal Jade

The blogs that have informed my practice are:

Truly Teach Me Tarot by Vivien Ní Dhuinn

Little Red Tarot by Beth Maiden

Crystal Clear Reflections by Diana Rodgers
TBH, a lot of the resources I used to look at while learning tarot don't even exist anymore. We are talking Live Journal and Xanga days. lol!

Podcasts that I have adored include:

Fortune's Wheelhouse

Root Lock Radio

Tarot Bytes

Myth Tarot Love

Tarot for the Wild Soul

Between the Worlds Podcast

When it comes to mediumship, I am blessed on both side of my family. I am first gen Cuban American on my father's side. I grew up around Delia (Tania’s mother) and other Espiritistas in white clothing channeling the spirits in someone's garage-turned-chapel. Trance mediums, bodies mounted, voices shifting, speaking languages unknown to me. I received my first spirit doll a few days after I was born. I was regularly blessed with cigar smoke and rum spit from an Espiritista's mouth.

My mother is a nurse, a caregiver, and a psychic medium (though she probably wouldn’t call herself that!). My mother would come home from her shifts in the ICU and tell me about the spirits and entities she would see coming and going from patients’ rooms. My mother also blessed me with a connect to the Blessed Virgin Mother - a connected she inherited from her mother, and her mother before them.

Growing up, we hid our Espiritsimo roots from our very Catholic Community. It was a secret, and it was this way to protect us.

As an adult, being in circle with Aja Daashur, Mary Grisey, and Helen Vonderheide at the Spirit House Collective helped me to see my gifts in a context that was so different from the cultural one I experienced as a child. Working with them through the Spirit House Collective gave me the confidence to share my gifts with the public rather than continuing to hide them out of fear.

Though I do not consider myself a part of the Catholic Church, my Catholic upbringing did help form a lot of my practice (though not in the ways the Church would have hoped lol). I was Baptized, received first reconciliation and first communion and am confirmed in the Catholic Church. I was also an altar server for many years, and attended Catholic school from kindergarten through grade 12.

I have known I am a magickal practitioner for as long as I can remember. My earliest spells were potions of rain water mixed with leaves, petals, soil, and other found treasures from my grandmothers' and father's gardens. While I identified with the word witch for a long time, I am more comfortable with calling myself a folk magician at this stage of my practice.

I was blessed to have parents who weren't into conservative hysteria, and who allowed me and encouraged me to explore fantasy, witches, fairies and lore through literature. My dad was an avid fantasy reader and imaginer himself.

My early practice was very much informed by fiction stories. My pre-teen and teen years were definitely influenced both by YA magically-inclined fiction, and by the then-emerging witchy corners of the internet. LiveJournals, Xangas, and Friendster pages, all dedicated to sharing the knowledge we taught ourselves, or perhaps were fortunate enough to have passed down to us by a mentor. Those websites evolved into blogs and later tumblrs. I suppose now it's called "witchtok," but tbh I've poked around in that space and it's not for me.

Much of what would be considered "witchcraft" in my practice was learned by listening to myself, listening to my spirits, and listening to the spirits of the plants and tools I am communing with. Much of what I practice, I learned through experience, through trial and error and trying again.

Though I am a humble servant and student of multiple closed spiritual practices, I have not receive any formal initiations (yet).

More teachers important to mention:

Erika Buenaflor - Working with and learning from Erika has helped me to understand that the offerings I formerly called “guided meditation” are more accurately described as guided trance journeys. These guided journeys are not a place to quiet your mind, but to connect with and be present within the Spirit realms.

As someone who works quite a bit in the ancestral realm, I have learned most of this on my own and through my Espiritismo elders. I have also taken Sanyu Estelle’s ancestry 101 & 202 workshop, and love everything Sanyu shares about ancestry and spirituality via social media and patreon.

I participated in the Dreamscapes Academy winter 2021 cohort, hosted by Sanyu Estelle and Tara Rin Burke, in which we delved into the world of dream praxis. Their work has greatly informed my relationship to dreams as spiritual practices.