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Ep 51: Divination as Tools, Not Law
331 Plays12 days ago
What happens when divination leads you astray? In this episode, we discuss our relationship to divination tools, how Tarot is an ever changing forecast and how the Bible is not law. We also get into the life and work of Fannie Lou Hamer and how the discourse surrounding this year's election disrespects her legacy.
RESOURCES
- "Does Everyone Have a Soulmate? No." A Little Juju Podcast.
- Tarot by Bronx YouTube
- The Songs My Mother Taught Me by Fannie Lou Hamer
- "On this day in 1963" by Jerry Mitchell. Mississippi Today. 9 June 2024.
- "Tell It On the Mountain: Fannie Lou Hamer’s Pastoral and Prophetic Styles of Leadership as Acts of Public Prayer" by Breanna K. Barber.
- "Fannie Lou Hamer" Biography Edited by Debra Michals. National Women's History Musuem.
- "Martyrs and Matriarchs: Women in Early Christian Apocrypha" by Robert Wilf
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Transcript
00:00:00
Speaker
Who do plant mamas? Get your
00:00:45
Speaker
and welcome back to another episode of hoodie plant mamas I'm your co-host Lynn Nicole and I'm Danny B and Danny B. How are you doing today? I'm doing okay today. Just kind of busy because I work from home. So yeah, it's been like kind of busy, but I'm making it. How about you? So the kids are out this week for fall break. So I know, so I have also been very busy. I get woken up every morning with like jingles on YouTube and yelling and I was like, okay, that's how I start my day. Do you have a a niece and nephew? I have two nephews. Ooh, how old is the youngest one? Four.
00:01:25
Speaker
four and 13 chaos sometimes the 13 is does more than the four-year-old that's fair yeah that's a tough age man i empathize with them they're terrible and i'm never going to teach that great again but i empathize well let's get into some gratitude what are you thankful for today so lately whenever i get stressed out i look at the sky and i look at the clouds and then last night when I looked at the moon I was like oh my god it's so beautiful and I just sat and looked at it for a few minutes and so you know I'm grateful for how beautiful the planet is and the universe that we live in like god bless I'm grateful for that. I'm thankful for my cat you know it's something about having another living thing to care for that honestly keeps me going you know I wouldn't go it so far I know some people do that with
00:02:21
Speaker
with having babies that to me that's like a jump too far. Having a cat to care for and just not being alone, it's it's keeping me alive. So I'm really thankful for that. Amen. So today I wanted to talk about divination as a tool and not as a law. So I started thinking about this topic. A lot of it was around my feelings of getting married.
00:02:51
Speaker
um, and eventually getting a divorce. So before I was even proposed to, the cars were like, get married, marriage is coming. And so I took that as a sign that like a few weeks later, when I was proposed to, I was like, Oh, I'm supposed to say yes. But like, I had so much hesitation around saying yes. And I didn't know if it was because marriage wasn't for me, or if it was because I did not want to marry the person that I married. Like I don't know what it was, but I said yes anyway, because I was like, my ancestors got me and they wouldn't lead me astray. Right. And so fast forward two years later and I'm questioning why my ancestors would guide me in this direction when I'm not being treated the way that I deserve. And I think that there were quite a few lessons for me surrounding this, but two of the most important were the importance of listening to myself and what I want.
00:03:48
Speaker
and that the cards were a tool, but they weren't law. And I think the second part became clear to me when I listened to a little Juju podcast a few months ago. She had an episode called, does everyone have a soulmate? No. And in it, she talks about how if you bring a potential partner before your ancestors, they'll say yes to many different people because each of those people could be great partners for you, which could be confusing because maybe you're like, am I supposed to be poly?
00:04:16
Speaker
and And maybe you are supposed to be, but also it's just a sign that like you have many different paths before you. It's more a matter of what do you want. And there was a reader years ago, their name was Tarot by Bronx, who explained that Tarot is a forecast of the path that you're currently on. If you don't like your reading, it's a sign to change your path. Like tarot is not set in stone. It's not law. And I think for me, it has been me having to confront my evangelical background, the whole like, not my will, but thy will be done, O Lord. And and seeing spirituality as this force that you submit to completely,
00:04:58
Speaker
instead of this force that you're working with to co-create your life. And so Danny, I want to ask you, have you experienced something similar with feeling like divination has let you stray in any way? I did say that I have, and this is partly because I'm hard-headed. So, you know, I got to take accountability. Sometimes the cards leave me confused, but a lot of times I simply be in denial. And typically what they told me is going on.
00:05:27
Speaker
is exactly what's happening. I really like that you mentioned that it's not law because when you divine, I think the issue is like, it's not law, but if you receive a message or you get a message and maybe you don't like it and so you turn away and you refuse to acknowledge it,
00:05:48
Speaker
I think things can get a little wonky. I think actually, you know, you were simply diving head first into whatever negative or not ideal message you received because you're not really, for me, my problem was sometimes I would just, and I did this literally just recently. So i I'm still a work in progress. Sometimes you might be tempted to like get upset. Like what the fuck are y'all talking about?
00:06:15
Speaker
and just put the cards up and be like, I'm not even gonna like reflect. I'm not even, and just move on. And then, you know, six months later, I'm a living witness. You like, I did it to myself because I remember.
00:06:30
Speaker
I remember when it comes to like, and I'm only mentioning this because you talked about marriage. I tried to stay away from the love readings for a really long time. Even when I would get a reading and they would ask if I'd be general, you want to know about love? And I'm like, no, because I had no faith in it. And I'm starting to still not have any faith in it.
00:06:51
Speaker
But on rare occasions, I have brought but different people to the cards specifically, and it has never been positive. So that's partly why I try not to add stuff. And I recently, because I sent you this spread, I recently did one with a person that I have like the biggest crush on. one It's ridiculous.
00:07:13
Speaker
I brought them to the cards. I brought this person to the cards and I got the devil. And I want to note this because I talked to several people who didn't realize it. There is a couple underneath the throne where the devil sits on and they're chained to that throne. And I never noticed that until I did this specifically for a love reading.
00:07:39
Speaker
Oh, and the funny part is, so I was not happy with that. I moved on and like the next day the cards doubled down. I did not even do a love reading. I was doing a general reading and all of these cards related to love. And then the devil smacked down like, bitch, you heard what was said. And I was just like, all right, I still need to reflect on it, but I did do some reflection and I was like,
00:08:09
Speaker
I don't know if this car is saying no about this person, but I do know that this car can be reflecting something in me in the way that I'm moving and the fact that like, have you done the work inside of yourself? Because you could end up in a codependent situation, not because this person is like bad for you, but because You have so much trauma around romance, sex, and relationships. And this was after I reflected because immediately your mind goes to, oh, they saying no. Oh, they hate me. They don't want me to have a love, but it's like, girl, you know who you are.
00:08:52
Speaker
you know what you have to bring to the quote unquote table. And it's a lot. And it's like, are you ready to have to navigate that? Are you ready for somebody to possibly be like, it's too much. You got too much stuff and maybe they and maybe it just won't work out, like all kinds of things. So sometimes you really have to sit with it. So I said all that to say, because I really wanted to mention the idea of like misreading cards.
00:09:21
Speaker
And getting out of that space of ego where you're immediately feeling attacked and reflect on what the a particular card like the tower or the fucking three of swords, like, you know, the dreaded cards. What else could this perhaps mean? And you got to look at your life through a broader kind of lens. I will say as far as like writing, career, health,
00:09:48
Speaker
I ain't gonna hold you to cars, be pretty clear. And a lot of what they been saying is sit down. You doing too much, you upset because you haven't been able to write, it's not time. Like you need to relax. And that pisses me off probably a lot more than me randomly doing a love spread is like, cause Nah, you're pissing me off because what am I supposed to be doing with my life? Here's my thing. This might sound problematic. I do not care because I've learned that we all got to go our own spiritual paths and I'm not
00:10:19
Speaker
I gotta leave the noise alone. I really don't be asking a lot of important questions to the cards. Like marriage, that kind of thing, or whatever you ask that you got, that that's that's serious. And I don't know if I'm in a place where if I seriously ask an important question and I get an answer I don't like, I don't know if I'm in a place to really be obedient or like rethink the route, because I'm hard-headed.
00:10:48
Speaker
I have done this to myself in the past when I was teaching school like children before I even accepted the job. It was giving hell no. I'm just saying like it was giving a hard no. And I said, fuck all that. I put those cards away for like a very long time. Like probably almost a year I stopped fucking with my tarot cards. And then it all came tumbling down. When I tell you my life was the epitome of that tower card.
00:11:21
Speaker
It was there. I was falling out the window, the flames, like it was, I was in the car. So, you know, sometimes you got to independently navigate certain things. So avoid that or avoid beating yourself up because it's like, Oh, I should have listened to the cars. Like you have autonomy, you know, and you get to make your decisions. You also get to deal with the consequences. So.
00:11:45
Speaker
I want to clarify, I also don't do love reading so that was a general reading where marriage came up. I also had the same thing during the eclipse I was pulling every day to kind of see like what's my theme for the next six months.
00:12:01
Speaker
And I got the devil card and the, I want to say seven of water or seven of cups. And someone had interpreted that to me to be like a situationship and to avoid it. And then the next day I got the two of cups or two of water with the 10 of pentacles or 10 of earth. And that could be interpreted as marriage.
00:12:26
Speaker
I was like, you know what? It could be a business partner. It don't have to be marriage. That's what I say every time I get, like today I got two of cups, which pissed me off because initially, see, this is the kind of shit that you not supposed to do. So initially I had picked up the cards, the lovers fell out and I said, fuck all that. I finished talking to shuffle. That happened to me. I i did the two of water. I was like, nope, put it back in the deck. It popped right back out. I was like, dang.
00:12:57
Speaker
they was like, well, let's soften it a bit. Here's two of cups. No, what are you talking about? I know what's going on here. So I don't really, I don't even remember where I was going with this, but yeah, I did get the two of cups today and I was in the way and I rolled my eyes. I just want to say you are not alone. I also do not do love readings because I just feel like I would not listen to them. So love readings come up when I do general readings.
00:13:24
Speaker
But I do agree, like reflection is necessary. And I also think that like divination, I'm learning that it's more so tips about how to move. And so I think that shift happened for me a while back when I decided to get a divorce. I realized that I was playing small and I was in this like, I can't do anything I want until my ancestors approve it. But then again, like this is my life and I get to make the rules, not them. And so.
00:13:54
Speaker
The past Mercury retrograde in August, I kind of bum rushed it and I was like, I'm not going to listen to y'all who are like, you need to do this and you shouldn't do that or a retrograde. I'm just going to do what I want. I was also born during the Mercury retrograde. So I feel like maybe that's why I have a different relationship to that than what most people do. But the past eclipse season was the same. A bunch of don't do this, don't do that. let the universe I'm like, no, I'm going to do what I want.
00:14:21
Speaker
and on the days i wanted to work i worked the days i wanted to rest i rested but i honored my body i honored my spirit instead of looking to outside guidance about what i should and should not do and so i really have been thinking about the next phase in my life as this time where I'm going after everything that I want. I don't want to leave any stone unturned. And instead of submitting to what my ancestors or what the cards or whatever say, I have changed the way that I view divination. Instead of thinking, is this thing right for me? Is it wrong for me? I look at it as do I want it? And if I do want it, what obstacles will come up as I'm trying to get it? Like what do I need to do? What do I need to avoid? What do I need to be looking for?
00:15:08
Speaker
What should I be mindful of in search of getting what I want? like I think that has been more fruitful to me than is this thing good or bad? Yes, I'm glad you said that. One thing I'm learning is for Tarot, in my opinion, and people might have a different feeling about this, I do not think it's good for yes or no questions.
00:15:32
Speaker
It's good for the kind of questions that you ask, something that is like where you can reflect and think about where there is flexibility in it. Cause I think a lot of people are kind of hooked on the sort of mainstream sensationalized thing of like, Oh, it predicts your future and Pat, you know, no, it doesn't cause she can change. Like, you know, we already know that like time is not linear regardless of what how we're existing in this world. It's not linear, things change, shift, whatever. So I already talked about the idea of autonomy earlier and about like, don't go to the cards about something if you're not willing to make ah certain sacrifices, but I also wanna like kind of echo what you were saying about trusting yourself and leaning into your own intuition
00:16:29
Speaker
Yes, there are traditional meanings of certain cards. These meanings have been a thing since the cards came into existence, but that doesn't mean it means exactly that for you. It could be similar. Usually it is similar, but you have to think more expansively, like in the context of your life. You just, you got to expand those preset definitions.
00:16:56
Speaker
What are the images in the car make you feel, you can also lean into looking at the card in different like individual things through like symbolism. What is all this water, this was a lot of water in this car and maybe you didn't even know it because sometimes it's not it's not even a cups.
00:17:15
Speaker
suit like sometimes it's another type of suit but there's hella water in the car what does that mean relying too heavily on those definitions can be stifling and that's something i'm trying to work through because yes i still be looking at the definitions but i'll also take it a step further and think like okay this is what they say it means but like how does this make sense in your life? What could this symbolize? Look at the image and what is the image saying to you? The last thing I would like to say is you don't have to or need to take every little thing every little decision you need to make to the cards because then I ain't gonna lie I feel like the cards will start giving you like really negative cards
00:18:07
Speaker
as in response, even if, you know, because they like, what? This kind of goes back to trusting he yourself because you're gonna be mad, like I just said, when they start hitting you with shit like the Wheel of Fortune. That's not even like a negative card, but if you trying to get a particular decision made, that's the kind of card that'll like make you wanna start throwing stuff because that, no.
00:18:34
Speaker
make it clear and simply it's simply not like it's simply not there's helipads this can go really right this could go great and it can go terribly wrong and you're gonna have to make that decision for yourself basically And I also feel like, you know, people talk about honoring your head, your highest self, your worry. Trusting yourself is about honoring yourself. Like that is the most loving thing you can do for yourself. And I'm speaking from experience. Like I said earlier, I do think the cards have purposely confused me because I can be a little like lazy or maybe I don't want to
00:19:12
Speaker
And I know, I don't mean lazy in a problematic way. I mean, I literally am making a decision to not do something that I need to do. So I don't want to face this thing. So I'm just going to go to the cards and da, da, da, da, da. And it's like, you need to sit with this and ask yourself, what do you want? And what do you need? And then move forward.
00:19:32
Speaker
Because you can't always be like, Oh, give me an answer help. That's not how life works. So yeah, that's another important thing to realize with divination. Like, it's an asset in song. It's not law like you mentioned.
00:19:48
Speaker
and you have a choice. You have autonomy and it's okay if you want to raw dog it. Like it's okay if you like, you know, I really like this person. It's kind of giving toxic, but I want to taste it. So I'm going to just move forward. Don't go to the cards about that. Don't. Okay. Because you're going to be mad, especially if you already know deep down that it's it's not a good idea, but you're allowed to make that decision. Okay.
00:20:16
Speaker
I'm pro the girls having a little fun and maybe be paying for it later. Just don't pay too much. like Just don't go too far. like That's all I say. so I wouldn't say the exact same situation, but I have been in a thing that I was like, I don't know if this is going to go well or not.
00:20:35
Speaker
And I brought it to the cars and instead of being like, should I, should I not be like, what should I be prepared for? And so far that has not been wrong. It was like, you should be prepared for a lot of miscommunication and misinterpretation and crying. And I was like, okay, I haven't been wrong about that. See, that's a good strategy. yeah That's a great strategy, actually. So well, are you ready to take a break? Yes, I am.
00:21:07
Speaker
Let's get into the ways you can support the Hoodoo Plant Mama's podcast. One is through our bookshop where you can buy the books that we've previously discussed with our Writing the Spirit guests. We have a Hoodoo Beginners Guide as well as our top reading picks. You can also buy my books. Every purchase you make helps support our show.
00:21:24
Speaker
check us out at bookshop dot.org slash shop slash who do plant mamas or the link in our show notes other ways you can support us include rating and reviewing this podcast on spotify and apple podcast follow us on twitter at who do plants and instagram at who do plant mamas check out our patreon where we share exclusive video plant and spiritual content for only three dollars a month if you prefer a one-time donation you can donate via cash app at dollar sign who do plant mamas or paypal who do plant mamas at gmail dot.com. Let's get back to the show.
00:22:05
Speaker
Like we said on our last episode for Hoodoo Heritage Month, we want to spend each week highlighting a hoodoo, either outright or suspected. Our hoodoo for today's episode is Fannie Lou Hamer. She's an honored ancestor and she has her own Hoodoo Heritage Month holiday on October 6th, which is her birthday. So I spoke on our Patreon about how I listened to Fannie Lou Hamer's gospel album songs from my mother, I think that's what it's called.
00:22:35
Speaker
I listened to that often during the lockdown in 2020. I was super isolated. I didn't have anybody in my bubble. like it was It was really rough for me. And so I would put that song on. I would get my ancestors. I would put coffee on my altar. Then I would get my own coffee. And I would sit there, drink my coffee. Sometimes I'm crying. Sometimes I'm feeling at peace. A lot of different emotions that the album took me through.
00:23:03
Speaker
And my favorite was her singing Precious Lord because I'm not sure if she was at Mega Ever's funeral or what but during the song she was talking about being in the Winona jail and finding out when she got out that he had been shot and She started in that testimony speaking directly to Merle Evers, which is his wife, and there's somebody else, who some other family member. I don't know if his brother or one of his kids or what, but it was just like a beautiful sort of like lead into the song where she talked about, she's like, if he just continues to hold my hand, I know I'm going to be all right. Mind you, this, this person,
00:23:50
Speaker
has been through hell. So to give a brief bio, Fannie Lou Hamer was born on October 6th, like um Leah mentioned, in 1917 in Montgomery County, Mississippi.
00:24:04
Speaker
She was the 20th child of two sharecroppers. She had to drop out of school at 12 to work. And there's a story behind her kind of getting tricked into working by a white man that you can go read into is actually fucked up. But she ended up, that's what she ended up doing. And then eventually she married Harry Hamer in 1944, and they would go on to work on a Mississippi plantation.
00:24:29
Speaker
I think it's sharecroppers. One notable thing that happened to Hamer, and I believe this is probably a part of her sort of getting into um activism. it's It's probably one of the things that probably influenced it. Hamer was a victim of the notorious Mississippi Epindectomy, which is essentially the forced sterilization of black women.
00:24:55
Speaker
as a way to reduce the black population. So they basically, none can essentially give people a hysterectomy. If you came in for something else and they just sneak and do that. So following that, of course, she couldn't bear her own children. So her and her husband adopted two daughters. but Despite navigating the Jim Crow South, going through this medical violence, both as a black person and a woman, um she was unapologetic, she was like an unapologetic advocate for black people's rights to vote.
00:25:30
Speaker
When she attempted to register to vote, her boss found out and he fired her and evicted her and her family. So she was forced to relocate several times due to the threat of violence, including being targeted by the KKK. I condensed this. I think most people know about what happened on June 6th when her and a group of activists were tortured in a Winona jail. I won't go into detail, but basically, you know, they were returning from a voter registration workshop led by the SCLC, which is a Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and they were jailed and tortured.
00:26:08
Speaker
by some highway patrolmen. So following that incident, obviously she did not let it deter her. She founded the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party to uplift the voices of black folks because basically they were being pushed out by the all white racist regional Democratic Party.
00:26:27
Speaker
Eventually, she and others would travel to the Democratic National Convention where Hamer gave her testimony about what black folks were having to endure simply for trying to vote in Mississippi. And she included her testimony of what happened to them in that jail. And she went into great detail. It's one of her most powerful speeches. It's important to note that President Lyndon, the president of the United States at the time,
00:26:55
Speaker
purposely scheduled a speech in order to like, you know, silence her testimony or it still got heard by people. It still made ah the impact it needed to make. But a thing I wanted to mention was a lot of people focused on what she endured. There's always so much emphasis on that testimony and what happened to her.
00:27:17
Speaker
and also the fact that she got forcibly sterilized. But a lot of people don't talk about the cost. If Fannie Lou Hamer had scars that were with her until death, and not just physical ones, she died from cancer and heart disease. And that's not a coincidence. That is by design when you are poor, black, and especially a woman in Mississippi. And in spite of all that, you know, she paid for us,
00:27:45
Speaker
for black folks in Mississippi. She was doing it for everybody. She was doing it for all oppressed people and especially all black people. A quote from one of her most famous speeches, you know, of course people will use it and and not practice it when they talk about the South, but I won't go on that tangent.
00:28:05
Speaker
Now we've got to have some changes in this country and not only changes for the black man and not only changes for the black woman, but the changes we have in this country are going to be for the liberation of all people because nobody's free until everybody's free. This leads me into a soapbox that I had considered leaving off, but I'm not because I need to say this and I need people to know where I stand.
00:28:34
Speaker
I find it incredibly... disrespectful when people make parallels between Fannie Lou Hamer and Kamala Harris. Hamer believed in the freedom of all oppressed people and to water down her legacy in the name of someone committed to being a war criminal because that is inevitable if you become the president of the United States. Also Kamala simply won't name a thing a thing which is that the U.S. is funding a genocide.
00:29:05
Speaker
And probably not just one. She won't call a thing a thing. Remember how President Lyndon tried to silence Fannie Lou Hamer's speech when she was speaking at the DNC? Sounds kind of similar to the DNC not allowing a Palestinian person to come and speak because apparently their pain and suffering doesn't matter.
00:29:28
Speaker
I needed to stop to try to make these comparisons. I just don't understand it. I just don't understand living in this delusion around what it means to be the president of the United States.
00:29:39
Speaker
and using identity politics to be dishonest. That's all I had to say. And you're right. So I think the thing that I admire most about Hamer, so I also listened to her gospel album when you talked about it. That was what made me go and listen to her. But I really loved that she was a faith without works is dead kind of person. She routinely used Bible passages to criticize white Christian segregationists.
00:30:08
Speaker
And at a Negro Baptist school meeting, she said, all we have to do is trust God and launch into the deep. You can pray until you faint, but if you don't get up and try to do something, God is not going to put it in your lap. Period. Amen.
00:30:23
Speaker
And so there is this quote. It's actually from an undergraduate student at Missouri. It's called Tell It on the Mountain, Fannie Lou Hamer's pastoral and prophetic styles of leadership as acts of public prayer by Brianna K. Barber. And so in that paper, she wrote, Hamer's leadership utilized acts of public prayer through both a pastoral style, sung prayer used to comfort and strengthen her community,
00:30:50
Speaker
and a prophetic style spoken in prayer used to convey what she believed was God's will for America and to disrupt the established white social order. Both Hamer's pastoral style and her prophetic style were built on an element of performance. She performed in a pastoral fashion by singing spirituals, modifying lyrics, and carefully choosing when and where to invoke sung prayer. Hamer's prophet prophetic performance was manifested in her desire to persuade,
00:31:18
Speaker
her audience of God's plan for America. She verbally pushed back against a racist white social structure throughout her speeches while also using biblical references to strengthen the message she believed God had sent to her to deliver equality for all American citizens. And so a lot of this was giving bibliomancy to me, but going back to that divination being a tool and not a law,
00:31:43
Speaker
The law that white people tried to enforce with the Bible was that because of the curse of Ham, African dis descendants were meant to be enslaved and serve their master. But again, because the Bible is a tool, if it can be used for devilment, it can also be used for liberation as well. And that's what I think a lot of Fannie Lou Hamer was doing.
00:32:05
Speaker
And I think a lot of us really struggle with this because you know I was taught the Bible was the law and it was hard to divorce that from what white people have done with it. It's like, how can be this be the law of our lives?
00:32:20
Speaker
when white people use it to harm folks. But I think if we look at the Bible as a tool, if it can be used to harm, it can also be used to heal. Yes, that is so true. So something, this also reminded me of, so on our Patreon, we're writing about the different Who Do Heritage Month holidays.
00:32:40
Speaker
And I was, I did the one for Nat Turner. You did the one for Fannie Lou Hamer, but it reminded me a lot of Nat Turner because he was also, he called himself a prophet. He believed that like God spoke through him, but he also used the Bible. It was like a mixture of the Bible and African spirituality because his mom.
00:33:00
Speaker
was kidnapped in Africa when she was a teenager. But it was like this mix up of like the Bible and African spirituality. And that was his like guiding principles that he used to overthrow the enslavers in his area. So that's what it reminded me a lot of with Fannie Lou Hamer, sort of like prophetic speaking and using the Bible as a source of liberation and freedom. Yeah. And I think, you know,
00:33:30
Speaker
Black people, especially in the South have, everybody has different feelings around what we know that hoodoo and voodoo are not the same thing. Does that mean that black people in Mississippi, I know for, from people in my family don't use it interchangeably. They do. And a lot of them are scared of it, but that doesn't mean that the clear influence, the clear like hoodoo and like African influence is not there because it's there.
00:34:01
Speaker
And a lot of like how black people approach spirituality, including Fannie Lou Hamer. Like even the like, I don't know what other people do at other churches, but I know in black churches, giving your testimony before a song is like really common. And in a lot of ways, for me, the experience of it, and I think that's what I loved about this album, like just really testifying to not only her struggle, but the black struggle And then singing, it almost feels like an affirmation. It almost feels like calling in this type of like healing into your life. Like something is moving. That's how ah that's how I've always felt in church about it. Yeah, so I think, you know, I'm always trying to tread lightly with this when it comes to who do and who's a who do and who's not. But I think that the influence is there. And even if these people didn't call themselves that,
00:35:00
Speaker
the way they approached their spirituality and their practice, that's what it was. you know I um agree with you as far as the Bible, you know and that's that's still a text that I struggle with.
00:35:16
Speaker
I do think the Bible is like a tricky thing, but black people have always been able to use it as a form of divination and they've been able to use it and sort of like reclaim that power that was taken away from us when we were enslaved. So I do want to say you talked about the Bible being a tricky text to work with. I was watching this video about the the Apocrypha, which are the books of the Bible.
00:35:43
Speaker
that are not canon, quote unquote. One, Catholics have a different Bible than Protestants. I think Catholics have more books in their Bibles. But then there are still other books of the Bible that are not added. And so there were these biblical scholars, they were all men. And they were like, if you look at a lot of those books in the Apocrypha, they center women as being like divine beings.
00:36:07
Speaker
and and women's spiritual journeys and things like that. And so they were taken out specifically to subjugate women. And so that's also a context that is important when dealing with the canonical Bible. and They've done the same thing when it comes to normalizing the abuse of children and positioning queer folks as the real threat by willingly changing the language that meant pedophilia to homosexuality. So yeah, so that's not surprising. I'm am super curious.
00:36:38
Speaker
about what those books are. I will say in college, and I don't know if this is relevant but we are already down to tangent, something about women in like the bible kind of class I took my freshman year. So maybe the schools are indoctrinating us and maybe some of us need to be indoctrinated but that class is really what sort of began my shift into like kind of affirming things I already had questions about that I always wondered about and like giving context to certain things. I know I had friends who for them they were like they not gonna let that turn them away from God because somehow they felt like being challenged on the Bible was interfering with their relationships with God because it's scary when you have to like face
00:37:27
Speaker
something that you've been told is the law and should it be questioned. So it's interesting that you said that because that that particular class, yeah, that started me on my feminist journey. I also had a Bible class, maybe they weren't trying to... I also had a Bible class first semester freshman year or fall semester freshman year and it was about the Bible and ancient beliefs and how they and biology and how it influences our culture today. And we had to read the Bible. That was it. We just had to be like, okay, what's the story that you were told was in the Bible? What's actually in the Bible? And when it was two different things, a lot of people were like the people in your class that was like, no, he's trying to brainwash us. it's I'm like, we're actually reading the Bible and it does not say what we have been taught has been said. And so one of our assignments was to go
00:38:23
Speaker
and quiz somebody else and I tried to do it to my mama and she refused. She refused to listen to me, refused to read the Bible and read it for what it said instead of what she told it was supposed to say. You know what's interesting is that I don't believe a lot of people, I do know that there are people who have read the Bible from front to back. I believe that a lot of them are not Christian.
00:38:47
Speaker
And I believe there's a difference too in the few, they're definitely in the minority. The few preachers who have actually read it front to back because I believe that they tend to be a little more progressive. The rest of these people I do not believe you read it to front and back. You've learned how to preach, even if you're a good quote unquote preacher and you're charismatic, you've learned how to nitpick through the scripture. You found certain books that really like push the agenda that you've been taught to push.
00:39:16
Speaker
And you lean on that and you make it seem like you're knowledgeable. But a lot of these people have not read it front to back because if they had, they'd contend with like the contradictions because there are contradictions in it. I had to stop getting myself upset about people who just willingly reject critical thinking because yes, critical thinking is hard. I went through a whole like the existential crisis in college and after because I was like, I don't know what to believe anymore.
00:39:46
Speaker
So I get it, but also I'm not arguing with you niggas.
00:39:53
Speaker
I'm not. Well, I have nothing else. Cool. I don't have anything else either. I think we have yapped enough. Thank y'all for listening. If you like this episode, you can like, rate, and review Hoodie Plant Mamas on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. If anything from the show resonated with you, make sure to share with us on social media. You can find us on Twitter at HoodiePlans and Instagram at HoodiePlantMamas. Thank y'all for listening and stay tuned for our last episode of this season, which is next week. All right. Bye.