Woo x You: Polaris Manifesto Part 7

I am a commitment to tending the flame of creativity

Greetings! This is Part 7 in a series about myth, speculative fiction, and social change. Catch up on the rest of the series using the links below.

• Part 0: Introducing the Polaris Manifesto (article)

• Part 1: Starshine and Clay (article) (audio)

• Part 2: God is Change (article) (audio)

• Part 3: Your Fav is Woo (article) (audio)

• Part 4: Mythic Critique (article) (audio)

• Part 5: Suspend Disbelief (article + audio)

• Part 6: I Made It Up (article + audio)

Buckle up, kids. We're going full hippie woo woo in this dispatch. By that I mean I want to discuss the various "woo" (metaphysical, esoteric, mystical, magical, etc.) systems that offer us opportunities to connect with other people, beings, and our sense of the numinous/divine/God/Source/universe—whatever you call that ineffable force in the moving through existence. Or maybe you don't call it anything. That's legit, too, but as for me and my house? We rock with the woo, and I like to pay attention to our primordial connection with the source of all being through divination.

The Oxford English Dictionary describes divination as, “The action or practice of divining; the foretelling of future events or discovery of what is hidden or obscure by supernatural or magical means; soothsaying, augury, prophecy.”

There are countless examples of divination unique to global cultures; a few I'm aware of include astrology, reading cards (cartomancy) like tarot and Lenormand, iChing, and reading bones. Modern psychology and the 20th century counterculture movement expanded the West's concept of what it means to be human, so we reawakened to diverse worldviews and religious systems for that divine connection. I say reawakened because many cultures outside of the Euro-American paradigm never lost touch with their sacred practices, even while surviving generations of plunder and persecution. We just got hip. Others been knew that these divinatory systems offer humans many paths to participate in world-building and cosmology. Through these practices, we claim our spot in the universe, and that place is intimately linked with something greater that we can ever name.

To mythologize is to make meaning of the world and our experiences, and it is utterly human. In the words of adrienne maree brown, "What you pay attention to grows," and I have loved mythology since I was a kid. Part of the reason I selected my graduate program is because I enjoy pontificating on signs and symbols. In fact, I’ve always been a fan of systems that give humans language to discuss our ticks and quirks, whether that's a vacuous Buzzfeed quiz, the controversial Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), the Enneagram, Human Design, and even sun sign astrology (which gets bagged on a lot now that ancient techniques have become more popular but I still like it). Sidebar: I think I inherited this interest from my Mamaw, who was also a Gemini and had a little placard hanging on the wall that listed all the pop astrology characteristics of our sign. Actually, both my paternal and maternal grandmothers were Gemini Suns, as was my maternal great-grandmother. So next time you cast your aspersions about us Gemini, during our season no less, know you're disrespecting someone's grandma.

People want to believe that the interest in these systems is new or a resurgence, but they've always been here. In fact, most of the mythic traditions of the world have developed some form of divination, magic, or mysticism within their traditions. The Three Magi (wise men) in the Bible were reportedly astrologers (Matthew 2). Multiple schools of Buddhism tell stories of levitating Buddhas and other superhuman capabilities. Also, Kabbalah, which was all the rage in the first decade of the 2000s, is an advanced form of Jewish mysticism that dates to at least the 12th century CE. Plus the entirety of ancient Egyptian cosmology was woven with magical practices and rituals for their gods. This is what humans do. We create systems to help us make sense of the world we live in and our place in it. It isn't "New Age" or a new wave. It’s just that capitalism has discovered new ways to commodify our myth-making tendencies.

These divinatory systems help me learn new ways to care for myself and access the very taproot my creativity. Astrology is still my favorite system, though I am (very) slowly learning tarot and Human Design. My first Saturn Return began in March 2020. Sound familiar? That was a time of great turmoil, to put it mildly… Astrology helped me put the chaos in context and gave me a way to ground myself by connecting that period of time with traceable historical patterns.

Divination helps me stay in touch with my creative fire | Image Credit: Chris Rhoads on Unsplash

In the time since then I have had a serious daily journaling practice, a creative ritual that astrology has helped me deepen to show me that time is a spiral instead of a line. One week's transit (the geometric relationship of one celestial body to another, stated simply) will often refer to a previous period of history, so when I'm listening to my fav astro podcasts or reflecting on the quality of the astrological time, it really helps to reference my old journals. Thus far, I've accumulated about ten years of sporadic introspective writing since I started journaling regularly after college, but I got more serious about it during my Saturn Return—time and seriousness tend to be characteristic of Saturn. And now I have a steadily-growing cache of reference material for my casual hobbyist astrology pursuits and my own personal archive.

Maybe you're not interested in my journaling practice because writing isn't your thing, but you really enjoy smartphone photography. Flipping through your camera reel could serve a similar function, placing a hobby that seems routine, mundane, and isolated in conversation and deep connection with the greater cosmos. Paying attention to the minutiae of daily life brings me a sense of presence that inspires my creativity, and thus divination becomes a mirror and a footpath. Learning to be present to the magic in the mundane is a critical skill for engaging the transformative possibilities of world-building. We learn to harness our intention and our attention to witness magic unfold —that’s what synchronicity is all about. Doing so expands our ability to listen and sense subtle changes in the environment, placing us in deeper community with the other beings in the world and our lives. Ritual and devotion are stabilizing, helping us practice the constancy of showing up for ourselves and the world we want to create.

I know this dispatch is getting long, so I'll wrap up with this final note. Author and independent scholar, Alexis Pauline Gumbs cultivated a devotional practice of reading and meditating on Black feminist texts every morning. As such, she is now one of the most profound and stirring contemporary writers, and she is living a "creative life of refusal." The concept of a devotional is typically reserved for daily engagement with religious texts, but I have learned that it's important to look at it more liberally. How do we live a life of devotion to the world we want, align that commitment to those of our kin, and then call in the power of the divine to support us in those intentions? There must be room for magic in this world and those we are building, and imagination asks that we take figments and filaments of the mind to call forth new creations. That is the very essence of magic.

Creative Prompts

Use these prompts to pull a new world from your imagination. They’re an essential component of the Polaris Manifesto because I want you to use them as an imaginative spark to invite us into your creative vision, whether that’s visual art, songwriting, cooking, or something else.

• How do you feel about the concept of god? What is your name for it/them/her/him?

• Do you enter conversations with god? If so, how?

• What rituals are in your day?

• What is your favorite divination framework? Why and how do you use it?

• From where do you draw creative inspiration?

CEUs

Each part of the Polaris Manifesto has audio, text, and video resources for you to enjoy.

It's important to me to share other audio, text, and video resources that may help you tap into the wave of wisdom that informed this part of the Polaris Manifesto. Most of the resources are free and listed on Are.na for you to enjoy, but there is additional list of pdf and epub materials exclusively for paid subscribers below.

Note: This post contains affiliate links. If you choose to purchase books using my Bookshop affiliate links, I will receive a small commission on your purchase.

• adrienne maree brown, “attention liberation: a commitment, a year of practice” blog post

• Matthew 2, Visit of the Magi scripture

• The Parable of the Stone Masons (or Bricklayers) story

• Ayana Zaire Cotton, For the Worldbuilders, ep. 69 "Scale Your Impact Without Scaling Your Capacity Through the Power of a Framework" podcast episode

• Ayana Jamieson, "Far Beyond the Stars" essay in Black Futures

• Alexis Pauline Gumbs, "The God of the Every Day" article

• Prentis Hemphill, Becoming the People (formerly Finding Our Way), "Remembering with Alexis Pauline Gumbs" podcast episode

• Alexis Pauline Gumbs, Spill: Scenes of Black Feminist Fugitivity book

For paid subscribers