sacred incantations: rituals of trans wisdom for every season

We, gender transgressors of the non-cis variety, do not make our way alone.  Being of and belonging to the earth, we build from lineages of wisdom that have carried our people through countless seasons of germinating, rooting, blooming, and decaying.

This wisdom finds its way across cultures, generations, and geographies, shapeshifting to meet the needs and realities of each context.  Despite being a relatively scattered people, we have a rich history of finding each other.  We exchange tools of survival. We become each others’ companions, comrades, champions, and kin.  We carve space for joy, beauty, and rest.

We do not share the same experiences, contexts, privileges, or languages.  We remain entangled in histories and patterns of turning against each other through racial violence, misogyny and misogynoir, classism, ableism, and the enforcement of (cis)norms and normativities that deaden, demean, and diminish.  At our best, we build solidarity across our differences and practice a shared commitment to collective flourishing.  We reach backward to ancestors, and forward to the future ones born to and emerging from this lineage–whatever they may call themselves.  We savor the particular glories that are our lives, our bodies, our becomings, our loves.  We shed what keeps us from loving ourselves and each other well.

We do this not only for our own personal well-being, but because we each and all become possible with and through others.  Where would we be, if not for the labor, the love, the knowing, the care, and the contributions of those before us and beside us?

From the imperial, institutional, and interpersonal violence our elders and ancestors faced through the eons, to the current terrors of state violence being unleashed, we proudly and defiantly claim as sacred the daily rituals that enable our survival and our flourishing.  We practice magic by constantly and creatively reimagining these rituals in relation to our particular longings, needs, and moments.

We celebrate the 70 trans, two-spirit, gender non-conforming, genderqueer, and other expansively non-cis contributors to this multispiritual project, and the vast and varied particularities held within this collaboration.  And, beautifully, we recognize the constellation of our people is far more manifold and multiple than any one project can encompass.  We encourage you to adapt these rituals to meet the access needs and shifting contexts of your life, your bodymind, and the community spaces in which you gather.  May you also feel empowered to craft your own–there are infinite possibilities for ritualizing our ordinary, daily, messy, sacred lives.

sacred incantations is a repository of trans wisdom, offering support through each season.  May this deck cast spells for our blooming.  May it root us in our aspirations, and accompany us in germinating and decaying.  May this deck be a portal of possibility–for you, and for us.