Ambience of the Uncanny #2
Mercury Revises my Reading: The Coyolxauhqui Consultation
Dear Reader,
I’ve been thinking of the 12th house as one with an inherent potential toward a decolonial praxis. My friend, who has a stellium in this house of bad spirit, says to me that this exiled state is where resistance starts. They say that although they often sit with the shameful emotions that all we too often keep in a closet; the rageful, vengeful ones, or the envious, deceitful ones, this greater capacity to sit with the shit of our fearful feelings, gives them a unique power to help others stuck in that malefic, afflicted place. Like them, I value and appreciate the perspectives born out of struggle.
Since antiquity, we have had to deal with demons. Something possesses us in the 12th astrological house, some evil spirt undoes us, making us mad and in need of a miracle worker. Some fierce star demons of Central Mexican belief, Tzitzimime, called devils by the Spanish, threatened to descend and destroy the world during solar eclipses, in which they may plummet to Earth to possess and devour men. According to Verónica Iglesias and Anne Key, creators of the Jade Oracle, the chaos and destruction they would bring were not toward annihilation but were precursors to a new order. These skybearers were petitioned for healing for their powers of regeneration. They come to us reminding us of our responsibilities toward sustaining a cosmic order, holding our hand accountable toward what our actions continue to sustain, and our power to radically change.
Chicome Itzcuntli Amatlapantli, creator of the Tarot Yohualli Ehécatl, helps me make sense of the power that these deities possess, which from our limited, human perspectives, understand as being both good and evil. In the Eight of Wands he names the Cihuateteo, who on divinely ordained days of the year, become identified with the Tzitzimime as they strike down their unfortunate victim. She, like entities possessed of Téotl, of divinity, of soul, exist in balance and may bring blessings as well. Amatlapantli’s description of this omen is an apt read of the 12th house as well:
“This is a card of the unexpected disaster, the divine bolt which casts us from our place of comfort and security and sets us adrift. We are struck with both of her Topilli, the first unmoors us, but the second reminds us that wisdom can only be born of suffering, and that of sorrow great poetry is born.”
And the 12th house is where we are torn apart, transitioning as a form of crisis. So if these volatile places are where chaotic disruptions catapult us into a state of dissociation, then the Cihuateteo - Tzitzimime are the personified forces who forcefully push us into this specific site of relation. The existential crisis all people experience is exacerbated as these natal houses are activated. These Spirits/places fling us into chaos, confronting us with the task of self-redefinition. Across these junctures and thresholds we undergo the anguish of changing our perspectives that may change how we relate to others, the environment, ourselves. In the intimate, isolated suffering we experience through the collective shadows of psychic wounds, the splits within our own culture that confound our forms of cognition are opportunities for conocimiento, that is a deep awareness of “the unconscious mechanisms that abet hate, intolerance, and discord,” as Gloria Anzaldúa names:1
“Conocimiento urges us to respond not just with the traditional practice of spirituality (contemplation, meditation, and private rituals) or with the technologies of political activism (protests, demonstrations, and speakouts), but with the amalgam of the two: spiritual activism, which we’ve also inherited along with la sombra (soul). Conocimiento pushes us into engaging the spirit in confronting our social sickness with new tools and practices whose goal is to effect a shift. Spirit-in-the-world becomes conscious and we become conscious of spirit in the world.”
We don’t have a timed chart for Anzaldúa but her philosophy of being forever betwixt and between unquestionably intimates a serious 12th house sensibility:
“I’m guided by the spirit of the image. My naguala (daimon or guiding spirit) is an inner sensibility that directs my life—an image, an action, or an internal experience. My imagination and my naguala are connected—they are aspects of the same process, of creativity. Often my naguala draws me to things that are contrary to my will and purpose (compulsions, addictions, negativities), resulting in an anguished impasse. Overcoming these impasses becomes part of the process.”2
She valorizes the epistemologies of subaltern communities comprised of chamanas, curanderas, artistas, nepantleras, that as spiritual activists are liminal people transiting various realities, and psychic states, exploring beyond the hegemonic status quo. As a curandera, a diviner, a red reader and writer I often express an oppositional worldview for my therapeutic philosophies must have an adversarial quality, not just because I have a martial Jupiter conjunct my chart ruler, but because the forces that pull us apart are the forces that enslave us are the same forces that genocide us are the forces of the colonial imperial state.
This language is not meant to maintain an abstract theoretical position, for it arises from and is grounded on corporeal realities. I give anywhere from 15-30 readings a month, mostly with working class brown women, and so I know how orphaned one may feel as the product of multiple colonizations. So lately I find myself turning again to the legacy of Anzaldúa and her considerations of Coyolxauhqui, our Lady the Moon, and moreso the Milky Way, who became her symbol for her understanding of a necessary process of dismemberment and fragmentation so as to recognize within yourself or the situations you’re embroiled in differently, as an exile in need of sanctuary.
Within the acknowledgment of painful fragmentation is the promise of transformative healing. And so dear reader, as dissociation and fragmentation continue to characterize our times, my struggle is to not only recognize and legitimize excluded selves, especially women of color, but to make for us a space of healing. And so to carry on in Anzaldúa’s vivid legacy, I present to you the Coyolxauhqui Consultation.
Like all my readings, this is a type of platica, that helps women and queers of color work against the injunctions of culture, family and ego that say we should fear our own darkness. Together we will not just interpret or describe your natal chart, present circumstances or consciousness but create a new reality through language and action, symbols and images. As my writing is a gesture of the body, in which I confront the shadows any writer faces, those periods of extreme depression drawn down by dissatisfaction, self-doubt and a sense of complete inadequacy, my readings are a buoy from total despair.
As Anzaldúa envisions Coyolaxauhqui, with eyes wide open, like the ghastly kakodaimones who stare on, we will courageously begin the creative work of re-visioning and re-membering from the wounds born from our shameful materia so that we are neither dead nor decapitated, so that we put Coyolaxauhqui together.
In the aspiration to evoke healing and transformation, we will use the chart, and the cards, finding words, images, spirits, and stories to work from the inside out. We will turn to the Moon of course, but also Mars and Saturn especially, probably Pluto, and Chiron, and surely the dark, cadent houses, to map an alchemical transformation grounded in a metaphysics of interconnectedness. Then, whether in-person or guided online, I will begin a limpieza to further heal the soul and restore the body.
We teeter on the edge of chaos, so the synthesis we seek will not be of a static resolution but rather pursuing a manner of movement, a mode of integrity from more clearly knowing where conflicting forces converge internally and externally.
If you have the yearning, I welcome your courage to join me.
Lastly dear reader, I am excited to tell you that
TENZ (XZ) is Now Open for 2024 Enrollment!
If you are ready to deepen and commit to a red divinatory praxis this new year, then this course is for you. Here is what Alex H., a recent graduate from TENZ year 1, had to say about their study with me:
"TENZ, the year-long decanic walk of the minor arcana was insightful, liberating, and healing. The way Christopher teaches tarot and astrology through a queer, feminist, and ecological (to name a few) frameworks is extraordinary. It felt like some of my favorite critical theory classes mixed with spiritual development and group therapy - all things I admire deeply. The synchronicities were really felt throughout this process and Christopher's teachings influenced me to feel the planets' transit(s) or placement(s) in the decans in a much richer way. Along the way, I was able to connect with and learn from others who shared such beautiful, poetic experiences and delineations. This would have only been possible through Christopher's careful curation of textual pairing and witnessing/space-holding despite a virtual setting. I highly recommend working with Christopher whether it be for a reading or a workshop/class and look forward to seeing more of their brilliant work in the future."
This cohort begins on January 25th, 2024. We will meet on Thursdays and some Fridays to share a facilitated decan walk. Payment plans are available! Read more about decans and the course from my previous post here:
I hope you’ll join me, or at least reach out if you have any questions!
Talk soon.
-Christopher
ANZALDÚA, GLORIA E. Light in the Dark/Luz En Lo Oscuro: Rewriting Identity, Spirituality, Reality. Edited by ANALOUISE KEATING, Duke University Press, 2015. 19.
ANZALDÚA, GLORIA E. Light in the Dark/Luz En Lo Oscuro Edited by ANALOUISE KEATING, Duke University Press, 2015, xi.
Love these honest, beautiful, and well-considered thoughts.