The Numinous Podcast

I'm delighted to welcome Erin Fairchild to the podcast! Erin is founder of Journal As Altar, as well as a social worker and (not currently practicing) therapist with expertise related to childhood trauma, attachment, and preventing violence in systems, communities, and families. In this episode, we talk about the ritual of journaling, and about coming back to the practice if you've experienced a betrayal, conflict, or violation of privacy with your journal. In addition to Journal As Altar, Erin continues to work in the fields of equity-centered trauma informed care and violence prevention over at Collective Action Consulting. I have wanted to have Erin on the podcast ever since I took her Journal As Altar workshop and received the care package of supplies in the mail - and we're so lucky to have her presenting at Witches New Year this year! Find Erin on Instagram @journal.as.altar Erin's Workshops Erin's Substack Community   Munro's Books - 20% off pre-orders of The Spirited Kitchen 

Mimi Young is here again - in 2020 she was here and we talked about intuition and tea and plant medicine and working with ancestors. Today we’re talking about animism, numerology, her relationship to the word witch, and what we might have in store as we move through the second half of a Yang Water Tiger Year into a Yin Rabbit year in early 2023. Mimi Young is a Taiwanese Canadian animist spirit medium and the founder of Ceremonie, an esoteric brand focused on imparting practical ancient wisdom so folks can actively receive support from spirits, break negative patterns, and celebrate their path. Mimi works at the intersection of animism and wu shamanism, ancestral wisdom, dream work, and other Chinese mystic practices to communicate with the Unseen. She offers private readings, education and mentorship, and made-to-order skin and aura care. Find Mimi on Instagram: @shopceremonie Learn more about Mimi's offerings:   CHINESE ASTROLOGY 1 + 2 Immerse, explore and interact with aspects of ancient Chinese Astrology in a thorough, straightforward and highly relatable way. https://shopceremonie.com/product/chinese-astrology-sessions-1-2-on-demand/ MYSTERY MENTORSHIP: A way into the hidden through animism + the esoteric arts https://shopceremonie.com/learn/mystery-mentorship/   HOMING COVEN: A coven of collabortive animist-esoteric practice, relational care, and the power of the commmunal https://shopceremonie.com/homing-coven/ www.shopceremonie.com

Thérèse Cator is an artist, performer, leadership coach, embodiment practitioner, and founder of Embodied Black Girl, a global community that stands for the embodied liberation of Black women and femmes and women of color globally. Part of that work is realized through the Global Healing Festival, an annual online event featuring over 20 inspiring presenters. Thérèse has been a coach for 13 years, has been practicing energy work since her teens and performing and writing since childhood. We’ve been friends since Therese first appeared on the podcast in 2017 when we spoke about Shadow Alchemy. Since then we’ve been fellow students more than once and we’ve collaborated professionally by co-facilitated small groups together. Thérèse has held me in some of my most vulnerable moments, at other times she’s given me really stingy feedback when I needed it. I love hearing about her upbringing and family traditions and this conversation about how she celebrates the Wheel of the Year in her Haitian tradition has been a long time coming. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did!

Seattle native, L'Erin Alta, is a mystic, medicine woman, and spiritual mentor with more than 20 years of experience helping women + femmes live their soul's purpose by being their most authentic selves. As creatrix of Black Girl Mystic, she leads masterclasses, workshops, retreats and 1:1 mentorships guiding Black women, femmes, and gender queer folk to embody wealth, ease, and freedom from a deep place of soul alignment. Her work as a masterful healer, magical facilitator, and transformational space holder began over 20 years ago in the Women's Research and Resource Center of Spelman College, one of the historically Black colleges and universities in the US . It was there that she started SisterFire, a monthly all-women's open-mic / spiritual ceremony / healing space. From Seattle to Spelman to powerful spaces near and far, healing and liberation has always been L'Erin's purpose and she's embodying it everyday.  L'Erin first appeared on the podcast in 2017 when we spoke about Lineage + Legacy. In this episode, we're talking about manifestation without spiritual bypass, healing the money wound|mother wound and releasing any conditionality placed upon our self-worth, and finding joy and pleasure in unexpected places! Go to Black Girl Mystic to learn more about L'Erin's courses and mentorship. Follow L'Erin on Instagram @lerinalta

Natalie Rousseau is here and we’re talking about her relationship to the word “witch”, how we feel about creativity and self-expression, feeling stuck, the books we long to write, and the stories we love to hear again and again. Natalie is a woman who wears many hats. She’s taught yoga and meditation since 2002 and is currently in school studying somatic therapy. She lives in Hul'qumi'num territory, also known as Salt Spring Island, BC. She’s a great listener, an excellent writer, and a gentle teacher and I know you’re going to love this conversation between two very like-minded women of great mutual respect.  In this episode, we mentioned the newer feminist edition of The Odyssey by Emily Wilson (and here's a Vox article on why her version is an important piece of work.) Also Circe by Madeline Miller Follow Natalie on Instagram  Sign up for her newsletter to stay informed about her 13 Moons program and other offerings. Pre-Order The Spirited Kitchen now!

Gather in for a tender talk today about love and loss and friend breakups and grief and how all that impacts the creative process. I’m speaking today with Angela E Morris, author of Love Notes to Grievers.  {Content Warning for mentions of death and suicide.} Angela is a writer and massage therapist who offers people a soft space to land as they navigate their grief. She provides reflective writing on grief and relationships impacted by grief, pushing against how the dominant culture reacts toward death and loss and mourning. She encourages her readers to take time to process their pain and be with their loss, carrying their loved ones with them, not leaving them behind.  Today we share an intimate conversation, itself a love note to all the grievers out there. We see you. You’re welcome here. Grab a cup of tea or head out to the garden with your headphones on – maybe don’t listen while you’re driving cuz the tears will make it hard to see the road. Whatever you’re doing right now, pull over and let’s have a minute together, shall we? We’re stepping onto sacred ground now. Find Angela on Instagram at: @angelaemmamorris @ange_morris   Find The Spirited Kitchen here: Canada Everywhere else

It’s wonderful to have a genuine friend named Crystie Kisler with me on the podcast today. Crystie Kisler is the co-founder of Finnriver Farm & Cidery, (@finnriver) and is a mother, farm wife, and community networker in the Chimacum Valley, on an organic farm located along a salmon stream on the north Olympic Peninsula of Washington. Her partner, Keith, is farming heritage wheat at @finnrivergrain I’ve had the pleasure of experiencing Crystie’s warmth and generosity in circles together, workshops together, and could feel it in the atmosphere when I visited Finnriver on a trip for my son’s 16th birthday. If I had a farm-based business, I would use Finnriver as the model and template.   Where Crystie and I could spend probably forever talking and visioning and activating dreams together is where land-based spiritual connection and social justice meet, where business ownership and equity and advocacy intersect, where dismantling supremacy culture meets building a worthwhile and beautiful and delicious future.   This is a conversation between two white ladies grappling with what it means to connect to land you don’t come from, and how we might try to learn how to belong there. Here is the poem that Crystie wrote and read to us:   Belonging (draft)   What will it take to belong here truly   To a land I was not born to, nor my parents or theirs or theirs?   Once I have learned the timing of the swans’ swooping return?   The names of the many  feathered ferns?   Once I am on familiar terms with all the wild berries?   Been covered head to heel by nettle stings  and blackberry briars?   Immersed myself  in the sea  wrapped in kelp?   What if I smeared  Semiahmoo Muck all over my body?    What if I packed it  in my mouth?   What if I ate only from this ground? Drank only rainwater  and creekrun  from these clouds?   What if my feet never left  this land again?   If the birds knew me by scent  and did not scatter  when I went by?   If all my neighbors waved? If I knew the names of all the bones and stones I found on the beach?   Is there any way to belong here?  In this place.  This time and space?   Will I always feel Extraterrestrial? Invader?   What would cedar say about me?   Could I become familiar to here? Make family? Grow roots? On a farm?  Can I untangle from harm?   Could I learn the real word  for home?   Could I assemble myself  whole among the mycelium?   Could I find my way  by the feel of it  under and through me?   Is it morbid to say I feel like I will only fully belong when I am buried here?   When I have given All of myself back?                    ~Crystie Kisler, 8/2

I’m thrilled to welcome back to the podcast, Nicholas Pearson - longtime listeners will remember him from episode 158 (Beyond Crystals Basics). Nicholas is an author, healer and teacher and today we’re talking about Flower Essences and how they can be so safe yet still effective, and how to work with them if you’re new to this as a healing modality or ritual tool, including some really unique methods I haven't seen anywhere else.  Check out Flower Essences from the Witch's Garden: Plant Spirits in Magical Herbalism Nicholas has recently announced some very exciting new offerings including an expanded pocket version of Crystal Basics with over 450 gemstone listings – follow Nicholas on Instagram @theluminouspearl to hear when pre-orders are available. Plus he’s co-leading a pilgrimage to Glastonbury in spring of 2023 to visit sacred wells, stone circles, and ruins, and to meet the crystal and gemstone guardians of the landscape. Amazing! Find out more here. To join my 7-week psychoeducation course, Contact Nutrition 101, simply sign up for The Numinous Network.    Here's a transcript of this interview.

Sophie Macklin is an anarchist mystic living on Tongva land, near the Los Angeles river. She’s lived in California for fifteen years but comes from Canterbury, England. She practises brythonic polytheism, antifascism, devotion to an animate world, and anarchist living. She specializes in topics related to anarchism, mysticism, radical history, communication with the human and more than human world, anti-capitalism, antifascism, reclaiming the commons, anti-ableism, and exploring different ways of knowing. Sophie is the person I chose to be the first reader of the manuscript for my book, The Spirited Kitchen. From the very earliest kernel of thought I had about potentially writing a book, she came to mind as the person I wanted to give me the first pass of honest feedback. Why? Because I think she might be the smartest person I know. Her cultural analysis is tops and I have learned so, so, so much from her way of teaching and of being in business. And at the time, I still had some things to unpack in my own mind about what to valorize and what not to valorize in a book about ancestral veneration, as a white settler under capitalism, in a time of increasing fascism. I knew there was nuance needed and also some firmness and boundaries so that my work couldn't be pressed into the service of white supremacy. I’m so grateful for Sophie for helping me see how I could improve my manuscript. Here we are jamming on anarchy, antifascism, ableism, and ungovernable bodies. Check out Sophie's work here: Beyond the Blood Ungovernable Bodies Radical Well Tending: Living Folkways of Care with Sophie & Becka I also mentioned RCCX Theory. This is a model we often use when we discuss sickness in The Numinous Network, particularly within the Sensitive Nervous Systems + Long Covid Connection group. *** Have a question or comment? Looking for life advice? Need some witch wisdom? Maybe I can help – listen for my response in an upcoming episode! Click here to leave me a voice or written message.  

Marika Heinrichs is the granddaughter of German Mennonite, British, and Irish settlers to the part of Turtle Island colonially known as Canada. She is a queer, femme, somatics practitioner and facilitator whose work focuses on the recovery of ancestral wisdom through body-based ways of knowing, and challenging the appropriation and erasure of Indigenous knowledge in the field of somatics. Marika resides on Attawandaron, Haudenosaunee and Anishinabe territory (a.k.a. Guelph, Ontario).  Kai Cheng Thom Susan Raffo's Piece on the origins of craniosacral therapy Susan Raffo's piece on acknowledging the lineages of healing practices Bear Hebert on quitting yoga Michael J. Morris Prentis Hemphill Don Hanlon Jonhson Camille Barton Robin Wall Kimmerer Resmaa Menakem generative somatics NeuroAffective Touch Focusing Marika's blog post on Bealtaine Marika's course for practitioners *** Have a question or comment? Looking for life advice? Need some witch wisdom? Maybe I can help – listen for my response in an upcoming episode! Click here to leave me a voice or written message.