The work of the fashionable witch is to disrupt the established order, to liberate and uplift neighborhood, and to dissolve the illusions that resist our collective rememberance of magic. The novel act of reclaiming our altars brings many alternatives for therapeutic and progress, particularly in our relationship with self and people round us.
– Ylva Mara Radziszewski & Kiki Robinson, creators of The Dwelling Altar
This work, this wealthy assortment of interconnected artworks, is a dwelling altar – a dwelling work of devotion that breathes and strikes and speaks and shifts.
Fairly than ‘The Dwelling Altar Oracle Deck’; it’s merely The Dwelling Altar. Despite the fact that sure, that is technically a deck – and certainly a really fantastically made, massive and splendid deck that could be a pleasure to carry, shuffle, and use – I can’t convey myself to explain it that manner. It’s much less a product, an output, and extra a world, a device for communication with the past.
These are greater than playing cards, they’re textured, layerd, multi-dimensional portals into the complexities of our human-ness, our animal-ness, our egos and spirits, our energy and magic, our relationship to the seasons of life and the rhythms of the earth, solar and moon. All that is mirrored by Ylva Mara Radziszewski & Kiki Robinson – two queer femme witches and decendents of the diaspora – of their imaginative and prescient of an ever-turning wheel of the yr.
By the work of The Dwelling Altar, we assist the distinctive expression of magic in our huge and exquisite communities. We search to generate a radical grimoire for magical resistance and religious resilience.
I set out most likely a complete yr in the past to put in writing a ‘evaluate’ of this deck for you, reader. I beloved it and I wanted it to the core of my queer beating coronary heart and I couldn’t work out how you can share it with you. In the present day, new moon, I feel I’ll simply inform you the way it’s supporting me very personally proper now, how a lot I adore it, and the way it’s so far more than an oracle deck.
Some context. It seems that an excrutiating a part of my journey in claiming and dwelling my most genuine queerness goes by means of an unsightly strategy of breaking down, coming aside fully, and proudly owning a variety of shit, particularly self-hating shit, and projections on of us I really like.
Nothing is what I assumed it was, and none of my greedy definitive statements, my blurted makes an attempt to pin myself down, are working. (Truly, they’re what’s making this excrutiating) (which is simply this complete additional story of how capitalist tradition performs out in my relationship to my evolving self and neighborhood.) This course of is messy, clumsy, painful – however with unimaginable moments of pleasure and easy readability that urge me to maintain going, continue learning how to do that higher, with much less disgrace, and extra honesty.
I do know this isn’t a novel story! Getting into authenticity, energy, or radical self-acceptance (certainly the basis of all actual energy) typically looks like being in a maze.
For me proper now, the Dwelling Altar affords a mirror, and a map.
The mirror could be scary, unflinching, complicated – typically this deck looks like an unpredictible lottery of triggers and affirmations.
However the map – oh the map – it counters this ‘corridor of mirrors’ impact by serving to me find and floor myself within the regular rhythms of the earth, moon, or solar. It’s a radical, magical mixture that bridges binaries: You could be accountable and nonetheless compassionate. You may harm and nonetheless harm others. You’ll by no means cease altering. You’ll be taught some classes many many instances – digging, spiraling, grieving, surrendering – earlier than you actually be taught them. That is some critical femme magic.
The playing cards type a wheel – or a universe, or a rhizomatic neighborhood, or an ocean, or… – that refuses to adapt to the absolutes of quarters and components. These collaged, many-layered playing cards blur boundaries and reveal intersections, fill within the gaps, flip a sq. right into a circle with ever-shifting nuances and tensions and prospects of being. I can shuffle and rearrange these, pull collectively constellations, tilt my head and see first this context, then that.
Studying the New Moon card, I zoom again and see Useful resource and Boundaries proper beside it, and obtain a reminder that that is unfinished work – nonetheless an area of projection, nonetheless in shadow, not but absolutely claimed. Understanding that I’ve sure wants in a relationship is a ridiculously new concept for me… as I learn the affirmation spell for Boundaries, I see the connection, and drop myself a stage deeper into self-awareness.
Studying the playing cards I see helps me sense the vitality of every area I transfer into, then to find myself inside it, naming what’s going on. The colors assist. The messy textures assist. The scratched-out phrases. The permission to be ugly, clumsy, to overlook the mark. They assist me to fulfill myself there, in that place of uncooked reality, with consciousness, however lots much less judgement. Discovering what aligns, being unafraid of my yesses and my nos, bringing these with out disgrace or worry or projections. They assist me to see the place I’m in relationship to the folks I really like, they highlight my triggers and fears with compassion, they place my journey within the context of a better complete – my queer ancestry, my white ancestry, my participation in capitalism… it’s an invite to complete honesty.
Some recommendation. Nobody may give you what’s yours to call.
For every card, there’s a spell. An affirmation for every touchdown level, phrases with which I can floor myself and declare myself again from disgrace and worry. Phrases that decrease my defenses, assist me entry the comfortable form of energy that I lengthy for – an influence that’s my very own. Studying these spells aloud is forceful magic, and extremely really helpful.
In the present day, a heat Tuesday in early September, a time when throughout me, crops are going to seed… and the map tells me it is a time for celebration. I welcome this reminder. I discover summer season a bit tortuous in one of the best of years and by this time I’m at all times craving the drawing in of nights, the beckoning of the darkish. Quickly, the map says, there’s nonetheless heat, nonetheless the work of harvest to be achieved, and the welcoming of that bounty and its classes.
I don’t wish to miss the great thing about this liminal season, harvesting rosehips, bottling summer season drugs, tending to these intimate relationships with self and shut ones, seeing what we have now, and reflecting on experiments of the busy season that’s now fading. There may be a lot unhappiness, harm and grief on this area. The Dwelling Altar jogs my memory that inside all of this, there’s additionally magnificence, and even abundance, if I’ll select to see it, if I’ll select to point out up for it.
I let my work communicate for itself. I select celebration. I permit myself to relaxation in that place in my coronary heart that’s nourished by witnessing my magic discovering itself on this world. I let go of any ligering expectation of what this expansive discovery can appear like. I permit myself to take satisfaction within the fostering of this magic. I bask within the glow of my vulnerability and revel within the pleasure of sharing one thing I really like so deeply.
The artwork of The Dwelling Altar is messy, maybe disgusting in locations. Not afraid to point out scars and burns and the decaying flesh of more-than-human… moss, twigs, a fraction of wing, a letter, threadbound bark, which lie on the playing cards earlier than me as if in three dimensions – I can attain out and contact them, really feel the regenerative, life-affirming, demise affirming energy of this uncooked, pure world we’re so powerfully a part of, whether or not we settle for our selves or not.
The stitches, in heavy crimson thread, contact me particularly. They remind me of the methods I’m making an attempt to pin down certainties within the midst of my inside turmoil. New Moon (immediately!) shines with mismatched bolts of readability in opposition to a chaos of symbols I don’t but perceive, crystals and gems not but uncovered but gleaming with promise. In Elderhood, stitches rise like comfortable sparks from historical standing stones, filling the cool evening sky with their knowledge, there for all to seek out. It asks me to seek for it, to be open to receiving.
In the present day I’ve used this deck to sit down within the liminality of this season, this harvest-time. To seek out myself right here in early September. I laid the playing cards in a circle based on intuition, following the unfastened color wheel Kiki and Ylva supply. I can take a look at all of the playing cards on this space and discover oranges and greens, pawprints, fields, berries, masks, rivers, mountains. I can floor myself within the magic of early autumn, and discover security, consolation, and perspective right here.
I usually use the deck seasonally, like this – I’m reminded to show to it after I really feel that sense of change on the wind. However different instances, I pull a card for a single affirmation – requesting the knowledge of this deck, I shuffle and ask: ‘please present me one thing’. These single playing cards incessantly transfer me to tears – they present me the ability of pausing to witness myself, to witness the area during which I stand.
My gratitude for this device, and for the queerness and permission and chaos and uncooked magnificence I obtain from it, is a mile deep. It is a deck I’ll treasure and preserve close to me at all times. This ‘evaluate’ is my providing of gratitude for the reward of those two witches, Kiki and Ylva, and all of the knowledge and radical risk they create with this highly effective murals.
Return dwelling once more Witches. Return dwelling to the spirits that bear in mind you even if you happen to don’t know their names. Name to your ancestors, not simply of blood and household. Name to the Transcestors, queer ancestors, the ancestors of social actions. Feed the spirits who floor you to your cultural roots regardless of assimilation, diaspora, and genocide. Go away gratitude, even if you happen to don’t know the popular choices. Don’t take what isn’t yours to offer. Don’t give what isn’t yours to obtain.
You could find The Dwelling Altar here in the Little Red Tarot shop, or buy directly from Kiki and Ylva here.
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