Instructions for a Prayer for When you Pull the Ten of Wands
Ambience of the Uncanny #4
Alice Walker wrote The Color Purple as an epistolary novel written by a woman determined to survive the cruelties of her life by recording every detail down. Before these letters are addressed to her long-lost sister, they are first addressed to God. This is because an abuser tells her to never tell anybody about her abuse, “nobody but God.” Celie begins her letters at 14, the year of the Saturn opposition, and so begins one of the most woeful novels of a spiritual captive. This woman bears not just her burdens but the weight of history. Walker’s intent demonstrates an innate capacity of all to recognize themselves as a radiant expression of the previously perceived as quite distant Divine. In the preface she writes:
“No one is exempt from the possibility of a conscious connection to All That Is. Not the poor. Not the suffering. Not the writer sitting in the open field. This is the book in which I was able to express a new spiritual awareness, a rebirth into strong feelings of Oneness I realized I had experienced and taken for granted as a child; a chance for me as well as the main character, Celie, to encounter That Which Is Beyond Understanding But Not Beyond Loving and to say: I see and hear you clearly, Great Mystery, now that I expect to see and hear you everywhere I am, which is the right place.”
So Dear reader, know that when I write you these letters, I am also writing to God. And because Mars and Mercury are in the last decan of Sagittarius as I write this, yet freshly ingressed into Capricorn by the time you will read, and since Mars is a primary time-lord for my year, and because the suffering we struggle through is ever persistent, since its time is true, I figured I should share something on this Saturnian decan of Sagittarius.
There are various ancient cultures that believe the soul occupies the skull, and the Horse is the psychopomp par excellence for many cultures as well, so in this decan we get the seat of the soul of the soul guide. There is no horse present in the Smith-Waite Ten of Wands image, there is only a man obscured by his burden. From the horse skull in Sagittarius 3 to the headless man in Capricorn 1, it’s apparent Saturn often demands decapitation. It is an almost universal trait that skulls are attributed mystical and magical power. If you have recourse to divination by skull you’d typically be some serious shaman. This decanic window precedes the solstice and like the others of a similar pre-solstitial, or pre-equinox period, a sacrifice is required to cross the threshold.
The children of Saturn are orphans, widows, land-laborers, hermits, secret-keepers. They struggle. In this decan are the grave robbers and diggers, but the suffering won’t end till there is a body in the ground and balance is restored. The Earth is owed a soul and when this card comes it means to collect.
Artistically, skulls feature frequently within the Vanitas paintings, depicting the fragile brevity of life. These paintings of stilled lives are the codifier for the passage of time, i.e. Saturn. More than a memento mori, the vanitas means to remind viewers of the inefficacy of pursuing the lush life, so their energies may focus toward a more pious daily existence. I know that enduring severe material hardship, or more abusive callous circumstances, such as those Celie survives, are soothed by authentic spiritual relationships.
Purple is a color of royalty but also of priests and prophets. When Celie thinks of what Shug Avery would wear, who she says is like a queen to her, she says something purple, “maybe little red in it too.”1
The Color Purple Steven Spielberg adaption was my Capricorn Mom’s all-time favorite movie and I think its because she saw in Celie a rarefied hero who succeeded her enduring ordeal, not with any flashy cape or powers of flight, though maybe some fancy pants, but with a superhuman strength of faith. And still her triumph is humble and human.
My favorite part of the story is when Shug and Celie disavow the white folks’ white bible and white God. Like them I lost all interest in God as a white man long ago, because as Shug says, like any other white powerful person, this God doesn’t seem to listen to our prayers. Shug says God is inside you, inside everybody and everything. We come into the world with God, and only those that search for it inside find it. Or it just finds you without you even looking, or if you’re unsure in your searching. Or certainly “trouble do it for most folks, I think. Sorrow, lord. Feeling like shit.”2
Once Shug left behind the old white male God she stepped toward trees, then air, then birds, then other people. But it was when she sitting quiet, still, feeling like a “motherless child” that the feeling of total harmony with everything came to her. And then my favorite, favorite part is when she tells Celie that God loves admiration and no she isn’t saying God is vain, just that God wants to share a good thing, that we praise God by loving what we love. Should you walk by a field of purple without noticing, without appreciating, you’d piss God off, because to Shug God doesn’t want to just be pleased but to please us back.
In the last decan of Sagittarius, the body and spirit come at odds, which is another way of describing a slave labor by which we betray our body for the Master or the Mister’s necessity. Celie was so concerned with that white man in her head that she says she never truly notices nothing God makes. Shug teaches us all about this decan as a face for evil inclinations when she tells Celie to get her mind’s eye completely off Man in order to actually see anything at all, because Man corrupts everything.
The Ekklēsia of Women
It’s hard work to tell the Man that plops himself in your way to get lost whenever you’re trying to pray. Shug says we must conjure up flowers, wind, water, a big rock. And at the end of the Wands is the obvious truth that candles never wax, but wane, burning themselves out as smoky plumes stroke the air. So for this prayer we will continue turning to the prophecy of queer black women.
At the end of the new musical version of The Color Purple, this card immediately came to mind. Not just women, but especially them, join gathered in circular banquet around a great grandmother Oak and sing. Celie is here with her congregation and they aren’t feeling old at all, rather they feel the youngest they ever did, and I could say more about Shug’s own exile from the church and her father but I will share her song instead.
The film closes with the Ekklēsia of Women, for Saturn’s women who don’t just the work land but are in sacred spiritual relationship with the land, with their sisters, lovers, husbands, sons and daughters and themselves:
“Ekklēsia is the term for church. It is an actual assembly of free people who gather to decide their own spiritual-political affairs. Women in the patriarchal church cannot decide their own theological-spiritual-religious affairs and that of ‘their people’, all women. The Ekklēsia of Women today are claiming their spiritual powers, forming their own circles of prophecy and revelation and support and nurture their communities, as it was done before the patriarchal church genderized religion.”3
Prayerful Design
Alas, this prayer is to help you pull through and keep your spirit from fading away. Gather:
11 seven-day purple candles. Purple candles are to repel dense energies. If you cannot find purple candles, any color you are drawn to will suffice.
Two four- to eight-ounce glasses. (This are only glasses for limpia rites and should not be used to drink from after this or any rite).
Filtered Water
Parchment paper
A number-two pencil
Copal, or other incense
Charcoal Tablets
Wooden matches
A brazier, a steel urn for burning the charcoal tablets
An egg
Make sure that you perform this prayer rite upon an altar, with appropriately dedicated time and space, mentally and physically. Once you have gathered your materials and you are ready to begin:
Play this song
While the song is playing write a petition / prayer on the parchment paper using the no. 2 pencil. Start this with “Dear God, dear stars, dear trees, dear sky, Dear peoples, dear everything, Dear God…” The use of God here is free from any monotheistic religious associations, rather an expression of the highest divine principle of Love. Then continue to pray for assistance, alleviation and the liberation for you and all oppressed peoples. Pray for fortitude and faith. Pray to be strong and soft and beautiful and aware to God’s beauty.
Take one of the 11 candles as a principal candle and place it on top of the petition. Place the glass with water and a glass with a blessed egg cracked into it, as an offering next to each other, below the principle candle. These three should form a triangle formation.
Arrange the remaining candles in a circle formation around the principal candle. Circles influence favorable outcomes.
Light the principal candle with a wooden match. Then light the remaining candles in a clockwise formation. Use one match per candle, and never use your breath to blow out the candle or match. Once all the candles are lit, do not place anything inside the formation. Let the candles burn out naturally.
Finally, light the charcoal and place copal and other incense / herbs on it. These offerings feed the velación and should be made regularly, preferably during the morning and night.
Pay attention to how the candles burn and once they are done burning, bury your petition or store it in a sacred space. Keep praying, keep believing, keep enduring.
A Course in Sacred Circuits
My prayers, my practices, and my spiritual relationships have gotten so much stronger since I began a divinatory practice, and moreso as I began teaching divination. It wasn’t until the last sagittarius season with my students of TENZ that I realized I was forming own communal circles of prophecy as existing within the lineage of the Black Madonna’s Ekklēsia.
After much spirit communion I’ve decided to significantly lower the tuition for my courses. I’ve previously had small but very committed cohorts, which I deeply love, but I want to make this work more accessible. If you are seeking sanctuary out of the bounds of patriarchal religion, I invite you into TENZ, a year long decan course in queer dignity and toward a literacy of liberation.
This is year 1 of a 2-year tarot and astrology comprehensive course. TENZ Year 2 or XZY2 continues toward a pedagogy of divinatory acompañamiento, that as a divinatory educator I walk with students through the liminal space of transgressive, decolonial self-actualization in this course through the borderlands. While the first year XZ is focused on reading, year 2 emphasizes writing.
In this I invite you to become a writing comadre in that we will approach the writing as dialogic, recursive, democratic, spirit-inflected, and only partially within our conscious control.
Year 1 explores the tarot as a rich unbound archive, a personal codices, a library of cross cultural historic thought that can be examined and engaged critically. And after we lay a foundation, we can then expand our scope.
The goal through this cumulative work is to empower your voice, your reading and your writing as a critical diviner. I want to us to continue sharing authority, teaching and learning from each other and encouraging each other through this revolutionary moment.
*Please note this is only available to students who have completed TENZ year 1 (XZ).*
We begin on January 25th, meet twice a zodiacal season, and hold each other firm the revolutions we are living through. I’ll be here if you have any questions.
~Christopher
Alice Walker, The Color Purple, New York, Harcourt, 1992, 20
Walker, The Color Purple, NY, Harcourt, 98.
Hettienne Grobler, The Mysteries of the Black Madonna Tarot Deck, Her Grace Sacred Art, Cape Town,. South Africa, 2021.