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In this bit of something different, Ada Wish (@a-wish) talks about the power of telling stories in the battle for Truth against fascism.

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The Speaker; of Rivers

On this card from Rachel Pollack’s shining tribe tarot, there is a large, colorful fish leading a school of smaller fish.

On the large fish there is an excerpt of a quote from Rabbi Nachman of Bratslav

The full quote is “And on the way I told a tal of such power, that all who heard it had thoughts of repentance”

The listed divinatory meaning of this card is Storytelling, imagination, the power to inspire or heal others, and Leadership with the implication of followers.

In her book on the Shining Tribe Tarot, Pollack explains how Bratslav understood that fictional tales had the unique ability to influence belief and change someone from within.

This is because when we hear facts and figures and logical arguments, we grapple with them logically. We investigate it from every angle and lens and by time we are done with it, there is not much left to believe in outside of what we believed all along.

A story doesn’t need to overcome this barrier.

Instead, it targets the heart and makes us feel things first. We are then forced to ask ourselves why we felt what we did. In those quiet pondering moments, we change. The story moves past our conscious mind and plants itself firmly in core beliefs that come out through our concious and subconcious actions.

In the post-modern mystical context that Pollack crafted this card in, it takes on a additional meaning. Because in systems ranging from Discordianism, to Chaos Magic, to the Oprah book club favorite The Secret, changing your subconcious beliefs, changes your reality. Making a story a type of spell that can change the reality of others.

Regardless of lofty mystical definitions, you don’t have to look far to see how this use of stories to change people’s perception of reality and how this could be used for good or evil.

A few days before I recorded this, the Episcopal Bishop Mariann Buddge gave a sermon at an inaugural prayer service.

She opened with Matthew 7:24-27 and concluded with the words

“Have mercy, Mr President, on those in our communities whose children fear that their parents will be taken away. Help those who are fleeing war zones and persecution in their own lands to find compassion and welcome here. Our God teaches us that we are to be merciful to the stranger, for we were once strangers in this land.

May God grant us all the strength and courage to honor the dignity of every human being, speak the truth in love, and walk humbly with one another and our God, for the good of all the people of this nation and the world.

“

In the video, you can see the gathered crowd uncomfortably shift in their seats as they grapple with the words they have heard.

In the following days Trump has attacked her and demanded an apology, and some of the worst ghouls of the Christo-Fascist movement have lambasted her for commiting the “sin of empathy”

The Sin of Empathy, being something they made up to justify their prejudice and greed that does directly against the words of Christ

“So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets” -Matthew 7:12

This battle of good vs. evil and propoganda vs counterpropoganda is not as simple as facts vs faith, or as St. Augustine of Hippo would have described it (big T) Truth vs worldly Knowledge, but two competing tales attempting to define Truth.

The conflict is not just emotional but spiritual. The battle ground that was chosen by the far right decades ago, and largely conceded.

But for the first time in a long time, a blow was landed for the Christ of Liberation Theology against The King-God of Christian Dominionism and The Prosperity Gospel.

Replacing, if only momentarily, the blue eyed gun toating American Jesus, with the table flipping Palestinian Jew.

I wonder if perhaps this is one answer to the question posed by Robert Evans in his essay he published this week “We failed to stop the rise of fascism. What comes next?”

He writes about what we have tried in the past has not working, and how it will not work in the future so we need to try something new and undefined, saying:   

“I don’t know what the next new thing will be. But between Trump and Mangione there aren’t many old norms left to shatter. We are in a time of enormous potential. Many new things are about to be tried and as awful and bloody as the fallout from some of them will be we all have no choice but to strap in and roll some dice of our own.

And that is where I am sitting right now, with the image of the Fish, the Speaker of Rivers, leading its school in my mind, and the unanswered question.

What is the story, that will guide us towards a better tomorrow.

[pause]

I am going to give everyone a moment to and think for a few moments, and when we come back I am going to read two stories from Dionu: The Unnamed Faith of the Named, which is the book that came out of an ongoing artistic exploration of trans mysticism, mythology, and spirituality that I have been working on for the past several years with a community of other queer and trans people.

[meditation break]

Book 1: Kindling

In the beginning, there was a single point of intense heat. This was The Flame. The Flame had everything because, at the time, she was everything, but she was profoundly lonely.

Her loneliness helped her realize that being everything and possessing everything was meaningless if She had no one with whom to share it,

so She let go and exploded outwards, forming the entire universe. She stared deeply into the fresh darkness, and from within it, She heard a sound. She spoke for the first time, “Name yourself! Who is there in the darkness?”

The first replied, “Mother, I am your eldest child. I thank you for giving me life through your love. I am The Stars and The Sky, and to show you thanks for giving me life, I will gather up your scattered flame into constellations and galaxies to illuminate the darkness.” And They did, creating an uncountable number of lights in the sky to guide us and help us dream of what is and what could be.

In the light, the following two children regarded each other. They noticed for the first time that their bodies were different, but also the same. They complemented each other and completed each other. In unison, they spoke, “Mother, we are your twin children, we thank you for giving us life through your love. To show you our thanks, we will go to the places where your love is gathered.”

The Brother, wanting to impress His mother, spoke first, “And in that place, I, The Sea, will connect all things through my embrace and nourish and shape the land.”

And The Sister, not wanting to be outdone, added, “And I, The Earth, will fill the lands, and the oceans, and the skies above with life so that it too can know your love.”

And The Brother and The Sister did as they had promised, and from them, every animal and plant grew.

Next, the final child replied, “Mother, I am your youngest child, and I would thank you, but there is nothing left for me to give you in thanks.”

Mother Flame responded with a laugh, “Is the giving of love and being alive not enough?”

The youngest child replied, “My life is my own to keep, and love belongs to many others and is cheap. I want a domain to rule over like my siblings!”

And so Mother Flame granted His wish and cast Him down to live with the beasts. And then, Mother Flame laid down to rest.

At this time, all plants were one plant, and all animals were one animal. They all changed and flowed into each other beyond boundaries and definitions. They shared uniqueness and innovations, exploring new combinations and creating infinite diversity within the one. The youngest child, unsure of whether His domain was greater or lesser than His siblings, attempted to count the beasts in His charge, but as soon as He began to count them, they had already changed and had become something new. And so He began to arrange and separate them in order to name them, and classify them, and define them, and He found that as He applied order to them, they became ordered and stagnant. And soon He could speak the name He gave every animal and every plant and every rock, and each was exactly what He called it, and each obeyed Him.

And when He could count them, and sort them, He lost the joy of experiencing them. He got bored with His kingdom and began to rank them. At the bottom, He placed the unliving things, just below the things that were small and invisible and insignificant in His eyes, and above all other things, He placed humanity. Humanity was His favorite of all the beasts because it was that one that looked like Him and, therefore, in His eyes, was the most perfect. He taught humanity the proper names for things and how to classify, define, and order them, and with humanity’s help, everything could be ranked and reranked so much faster than before, given His slightest whim. While this excited Him at first, He soon again became bored.

And so He looked at humanity and began to separate, and order, and classify them. He created sexes, classes, races, and castes. And when they were separate, He began to rank them. At the bottom, He placed the meek, the oppressed, the infirmed, and the invisible, and at the top, He placed the men who best reflected Himself. He called these men kings, and He called Himself The King of all Men.

And through His kings, He searched the depths of The Earth and the corners of The Sea and the dimmest Stars in The Sky, and He claimed dominion over and assigned value to all things. And by defining them in His own terms, He controlled them. He cataloged them, and He pinned them down. And then, above them all, He placed Himself on an eight-legged, golden throne, and above His head, He placed a crown.

Until, finally, the only thing left moving and changing and warm was Himself, so He nailed the crown to His brow and shackled Himself to the throne with chains of His own making, and sat in cold silence as the universe became a dark, lifeless, and frozen place.

When Mother Flame awoke, She went to greet Her children and was horrified to find that Her youngest child, the one who now called himself The King, had bound His siblings and frozen all that had been brought to life by Her love.

From His golden shackled throne, The King said to The Flame, “Mother, aren’t you proud of me? I took what you gave me and made more of it, and now my kingdom eclipses even those of my siblings, everything bows low to me”

Mother Flame, in horror, rebuked Him, “My precious child, the only thing that you needed to do to make me proud was to be happy, free, and love yourself, and the only thing that could bring me shame was for you not to allow others to love and live as themselves. In your mad drive for power and dominion, you have even imprisoned yourself. This must be undone.”

And so Mother Flame unbound all of life, and freed all Her children, and returned warmth and love to the universe, and not knowing what else to do, She reached Her hand deep into the ground and pulled out a blade from the molten core that She used to remove Her youngest child’s tongue and proclaimed, “Until you learn how to listen to others with love, I will not permit you to speak, you are now bound to watch and listen until you understand the extent of the harm you have done.”

And so life continued onward, and once again, things grew wild and changed and broke out of definitions and shifted beneath their labels. But, humanity’s kings remembered their god, who, in their eyes, reflected themselves, and so they created laws and borders and fought wars over land, power, and gold. And they continue to do so until this day, under the watchful eyes of their silent, unrepentant King.

Book 2, The Five Dreams, The Dream of the Child Who Pushed the World

As all children do, The Child asked, “Why?”

“Why is the sky blue?”

“Why does the cow moo?”

“Why is four two plus two?”

And their parents would do their best to answer but often the answer would be a dismissive, “I don’t know.” and the parents wouldn’t think any more about it.

That was until the question was, “Why are there boys and girls?”

The parents, flustered, tried to explain with as little detail as possible, “There are boys and girls because you need both to work together so that you can make a baby.”

“Why do they need to make a baby?”

“They need to make babies so there can keep being new people in the world,” responded the parents.

“Why do there need to be people in the world?”

“I don’t know, maybe it doesn’t need them.” said the parents definitively, hoping that it would end at that.

“I don’t think I want to have a baby,” said The Child.

“Well, that would be your choice to make when you are older.”

“If I don’t want to have a baby, then why do I have to be a boy or a girl?”

And at that, the parents froze. They exchanged serious glances and carefully said, “Even if you don’t want to have a child people still have to be a boy or a girl because they were made that way.”

“But why were they made that way?”

“Because of biology, some people are born boys and some people are born girls, and that is a biological fact,” stated the parents with undo authority.

“Why can’t people just choose if they want to be a boy or a girl?”

“It doesn’t work that way; boys are boys, and girls are girls, and that is all there is.”

And for a while The Child was placated. Left to ponder the new information.

As time went on, The Child grew and went to school they asked less questions. They had begun to think they understood the world. But some questions still weighed them down.

One day, The Child asked their teacher, “Why are there boys and girls?”

And the teacher explained “When a child is conceived they get some genes from their mother and some from their father, these are stored in things called chromosomes. If you get a certain chromosome you become a boy and if you get another chromosome you become a girl.”

The Child thought long and hard about this and asked, “Is there a way to change your chromosomes?”

“No, they are what makes you who you are, and that is all there is.”

Time moved forward, and The Child grew taller and learned to ask even fewer questions, but they knew there was something they still didn’t understand.

One day, in their early adolescence, they accepted a friend’s invitation to go with them to church. At the church a preacher talked about The One True God and how all of life’s answers could be found in His book.

And so after the service, The Child went up to him and asked “Why are there boys and girls?”

And the preacher said “God our All Powerful Lord Created Adam in His image and Eve from his rib to serve him, and so God created us all.”

“Could God create someone who is neither a boy nor a girl?”

And at this, the preacher turned red in the face and said, “God would not create such a person because they would be an abomination in the eyes of The Lord!”

And with that, The Child learned not to ask any more questions. They went through life suppressing the curious feelings inside them and waiting only for information and explanations to be offered to them.

But then, one day, they sat alone beneath The Stars on a clear night and looked up. As they stared, more and more stars seemed to fade into sight. The Universe was suddenly unfathomably big and unknown, and with that realization, they closed their eyes and dreamed.

They stood at a crossroads in a great dark void. Along one path was a woman and along the other was a man. Both paths branched from a single tree containing all of their ancestors stretching back through time and from the tree’s root sprung all life as a single unbroken being.

The Child knew that they could not go backwards, but neither of the paths forward was one they wanted to walk, and so, they stared forward into the dark unknown. As their eyes adjusted pinpricks of light appeared and resolved into stars and between the stars stood a figure in a black cloak holding a lantern.

“Who are you?” asked The Child.

“I am The Mother’s first child. I am both The Stars and The Emptiness between them. I am no one’s brother or sister, but I am the Sibling to all. I am the one who walks their own path.”

“Why are there only two paths?”

“That is only what you have been told and what you have seen, but there is more. Close your eyes and listen to yourself.”

And so The Child closed their eyes, and in this darkness, they listened to themself. They felt their body and their soul and knew theirself, and when they opened their eyes, they saw more paths forward than stars in the sky.

I chose these two stories because they resonated with me right now in this moment.

If they resonated with you and you would like to see more, you can find the entire book at Dionu.org or purchase a physical copy from Amazon (I’ll post links in the show notes). The book is a creative commons text and you are encouraged to reproduce, reinterpret, and remix it as you see fit.

If these stories didn’t resonate with you, then I implore you to take some time and think about what stories resonate with you right now, and to share them with me and others.

You can find me on Bluesky @A-Wish, that is the letter A, a hyphen, W I S H.

You can back us on patreon to get episodes one week early and be the first to hear our new ongoing series on Evangelion Neongenesis, and you can find our merch and my other art on SplendorQueer . com.

Thank you for listening to this Bit of Something Different.

Until next time

Byeeeeee