Nov 9, 2021 - First Introductory Class at the Dragon Herbarium

The carefully assembled bricolage around the classroom was overwhelming and the invitation was there to discover the power within each of the objects. Baba began his lecture and his knowledge and wisdom on the History of Conjure was apparent.

Baba did not lecture so much as gave those assembled an enlightening introduction. This was not what expected. There was a practitioner who was present in the room and undoubtedly gaining more from Baba than me in my shallow first-time knowledge.

Yet time after time what I did understand floored me.This was experiential learning. We handled, smelled and heard many of the objects first-hand. For two years now I have been trying to accompany BIPOC and LGBTQIA siblings and I was reminded how far and deep that accompaniment could go and what there was to that could be learned.

Baba asked how we would feel if we were tasked with the healing of a community and a knowledge of the local environment and were then transplanted in a new land where you did not know the plants or the positions of the stars. The answers were troubling and the perspective uncomfortable. How does this affect the Reparations work that I am committed to?

Baba took those of us who gathered down a fascinating path that connected, for me, to past journeys and explorations.

I appreciated an off-hand remark said about the language that sounded like people were singing to one another. There is a depth to many of the traditions we may think we are following that academia can drain of power. Take the music in this video. I listen to that music and song and feel that when I read the Psalms in the Bible I am only experiencing dry bone skeletons as written words rather than song.

What Baba demonstrated connected. I am still not familiar enough with the words but there were ceremonies of rituals he followed in "cleansing" our practitioner with the horsetail that captured something beautiful and essential between dance and ceremony.

There is so much to overcome in life. We all have good memories and bad ones. This talk pulled many good memories and past "spiritual insights" into the present. It allowed the past not to be a drag and not to allowing the future to be frightening.

I felt gratitude for this introduction,

 

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