Nicole Georges: Heart Moments With Animals
Can animals be our spiritual familiars? We think so. Graphic novelist and host of the Sagittarian Matters podcast Nicole Georges joins us this week to talk about creating a spiritual connection with animals through drawing, getting babysat by a Gaelic witch, and anti-capitalist spirituality. Plus, teacher and artist Peter Anthony shares a spell for honoring a familiar who has passed over.
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Michelle Tea: Hello and welcome to Your Magic. I’m Michelle Tea, and this is an extra-special episode for me today, because the guests are two of my best friends! Nicole J Georges, in addition to being my bestie, is an award-winning graphic novelist, teacher and and host of the podcast Sagittarian Matters.. Her most recent book, Fetch: How a Bad Dog Brought Me Home, is being adapted for television. We’re going to talk about elderly, chain-smoking witch babysitters, palm readers and, of course, animals. After that, we’ll hear from Peter Anthony, who I met while sleeping out for Billy Idol tickets in 1986, and who I learned to read tarot alongside. Peter is an artist, a psychic and a tarot reader, and today he has a ritual to honor a familiar who has passed over. Stay with us.
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Michelle Tea: I have always been charmed by the notion of an animal familiar, those extra-special animal friends who help a witchy person access a deeper magic, who look out for you in a protective way, who seem to connect with you in a profound and personal way. The concept of an animal familiar harkens back to medieval Europe, when witches were divided into ‘cunning folk’ - good witches, basically, folk healer and wise people, and ‘witches’ - dastardly, evil women getting it on with the devil. According to the wisdom of the time, both categories of practitioners had these familiars, animal guides they had special relationships with; the Cunning Folk’s familiars were high vibes only, and the Witch’s familiars were furry (or scaly, or feathered) bundles of hexes and curses.
Obviously, in 2022 we know such divisions between ‘benevolent’ and ‘malevolent’ practitioners were complicated and full of lies too complicated to get into. Today’s Cunning Witch-Folk have reclaimed not only the ‘W’ word, but, for many witches, the practice of keeping a Familiar, that animal companion whose energy feels otherworldly to you.
Now, I’m not a person who gets dopamine off of animals. I get dopamine from shopping and internet approval, okay? I wish my dopamine dam opened up at something as wholesome and natural as the animal kweendom, but it’s not how the Goddexx built me. Because of this, I didn’t think I’d ever have an animal familiar. I do love animals, and have had pets - cats, mostly - that I’ve adored, but I never felt like they belonged to me, or me to them. When circumstances inevitably required that I rehome them, I did so without much bother - though I did feel a tad like a sociopath for my lack of misery. Why was my affection for my pets so detached? I chalked it up to my airy, Aquarian nature, which held their autonomy in high esteem. That, and the fact that I get my dopamine mostly from shoes, and sex.
Four years ago, on the day I was celebrating my son’s third birthday - a celebration with a rainbow theme - a cat walked right off the streets and into my house. A tuxedo cat with bovine markings and black fur that came ran from his pointy ears into symmetrical points beneath his eyes, like a mask. He sort of looked like Batman, as a cat. When he walked into my home, my son, along with his three-year-old cousin, exclaimed in surprise and delight. The two toddlers made quick work of awkwardly lifting the cat into smooshing, uncomfortable hugs, while I stood, prepared to rip the beast from their hands at the first sign of his fur (understandably) rising in warning to the manhandling monsters. But, the cat didn’t. He patiently waited to be released from their enthusiastic clutches, looking around the home with sharp, yellow eyes. When he was finally freed, he trotted into the kitchen, a real bony-marony cat, grimy, in need of some food and some water and, apparently, some rest. He plopped onto a blanket folded on the floor, and passed out.
I have a picture from that day, after the birthday party had ended, after we’d gone to our favorite tacky diner for some lunch, when we’d returned home to put the toddlers down for their naps. My son is still wearing the rainbow-striped sweatbands he’d gotten for the occasion, and is in a deep sleep in my bed. The mysterious black-and-white cat is snuggled into him, his long cat body stretched out along the length of him. When my son woke up I showed him the picture and asked what we should call our new friend. He said, ‘Birthday Rainbow.’
I can’t say that from then on, Birthday Rainbow never left us. I can say he always comes back. He made his conditions known early on - complete freedom, a demand I can appreciate. Currently he resides in his third house with us; after each move, letting him outdoors was nerve-wracking. Would he get lost in the new neighborhood? Would he somehow find his way back to our old house and wait there for us, heartbreakingly confused? Nope. He always came back. He’d come back to eat and to snuggle, to sit on our laps or find a hideaway only he can access, high upon the kitchen cabinets, or rolled up in a bin in my son’s closet. He always seems to know when I’m meditating or doing breathwork, and will come sit in the nest of my crossed legs, nudge a crystal away from me to bat around like a toy. When I find a shed claw or whisker, I bring it to my altar.
Is Birthday my familiar? Truthfully, I have always dreamed of an animal that found its way to me - I imagined a dog on the side of a road, or a rando reptile in need of a home. I didn’t think a cat would literally walk right into my house, take a nap in my bed and claim me as his own - me, and my son, and my mom, and my husband, and anyone who comes over for a visit, especially if you’re allergic. Birthday will hop right onto your lap, grossing you out with his outdoor-cat grime and dander, and charming you with his rougish, rakish, rascally ways. Sometimes I think that Birthday isn’t so much my familiar as he is everybody’s familiar.
This theory was somewhat confirmed when Birthday came home from a couple nights out, with a note bound with yarn and affixed with wire to his collar. Now, yes, I do get very alarmed when Birthday stays gone for too long. When he vanishes for a day or two, sometimes three, I can’t help but think a coyote has gotten him, an inevitability. Does it make me sad? It does. I am not, really, a sociopath. But do I think that if Birthday himself was given the choice between a shorter life of freedom and a longer life cooped up in a house, he would choose freedom. Even if it means he’ll one day be dinner for a coyote, as so many wild rodents have been dinner for him.
But - the note! It read, Dear Cat Owner, Your cat visits our home and we love him. What is his name? Please let us know about him. And there was an email.
This was most magical, a message in a bottle but yoked to the collar of a cat! My cat! I quickly emailed the address on the note, and gave the stranger on the other side the details. They responded quickly, happy to learn Birthday has a loving home. They’d begun calling him ‘Moo,’ which we now do as well, like a nickname. He’d been visiting them most night for the past two weeks, slinking up to their window and making ‘love calls.’
‘Our three cats have been so fascinated by their new friend. They watch from the screen windows and front door as my husband and I have gone outside to pet your handsome and loving Birthday. He has been such a joy of a visitor and we hope to see him more!’
It was very kind of them to acknowledge my role as primary partner, with the little ‘your Birthday,’ but truly, I don’t believe that Birthday “Moo” Rainbow belongs to anyone, which is perhaps how he works so well as my familiar; coming into my life and trusting that I’ll love him in the freedom-focused manner he needs to be loved. When he meows at the window each morning while I’m making my coffee, I’m so happy to see him. Maybe I do get a little bit of dopamine from him after all. But what I am certain of is, Birthday isn’t only my familiar. He’s his own damn cat.
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Michelle Tea: Nicole Georges, thank you so much for being a guest on Your Magic.
Nicole Georges: Oh my god. Michel, thank you for having me. Long time listener. First time caller.
Michelle Tea: This is really exciting because you've had me as a guest on Sagittarians Matters countless times. So I'm really happy that I get to return the favor. So what prompted you or what prompted you to start the podcast and also like how? How is it sagittarians? Like what? What matters are the Sagittarians matters of life, you know?
Nicole Georges: Well, as you know, I'm also a bit of a poser, Capricorn, because I have a lot of Capricorn in my chart. So sometimes we have Capricorn matters, but we even have a theme song for Capricorn Matters.
But so I am a Sagittarius sun. I've been a Sagittarius my whole life. And at some point, I always want to have a radio show. At some point I work somewhere or somebody had a radio show called Animal Matters, which I know so eighties to me. Yeah, it was an animal rights talk show on a local community radio, and it was like animal matters.
Michelle Tea: Oh, I love it.
Nicole Georges: And then at some point I was like, What if I just had a show or like a public access show or something called Sagittarians Matters, where I just like interviewed interesting sagittarians and we just talked about whatever we want to talk about and just some of that spun into me. Having a podcast and I was about to go. I'm an artist, I'm a graphic novelist. Sure. And my my job sends me to a lot of isolating places in my head and in the world. And I was about to do a fellowship in Virginia, around no one except for one friend. And so I thought, what a great time to start a podcast to break out of my isolation.
Michelle Tea: That is so great. So listen, I like I know that you have a bit of like a witchy I don't know if you would say you have a practice. I mean, I know you're a believer and a dabbler in the occult arts. At the very least, your graphic novel calling. Dr. Laura prominently features a visit to a psychic, which then was also talked about on your recent other podcast, which you can talk about Relative Fiction, which is so incredible. So, you know, when were you drawn into the occult arts? Like, when did you notice that they were a thing? And like, how did you start dabbling?
Nicole Georges: When I was a kid, my mom would go hang out with different boyfriends for long spates of time and leave me with a witch. An old lady was my babysitter? This is also the first zine I ever saw. She did a newsletter about being a witch, being like she was a gaelic witch. Oh yeah, she did this kind of gaelic witch newsletter for her and her witchy friends. She used witchy witch clip art. You know, this is in the 80s. She smoked inside her trailer. I always thought she was going to die of emphy sema. While I was there, I was like, Dear God, please don't let her die.
She taught me about going to garage sales. She taught me about zines. She taught me. She didn't. We didn't, like, sit around a cauldron or anything. But this was my first deliberate exposure. Other than astrology being tossed around in my household. But then, of course, as an adult when I came out, I just, you know, automatically was in the fold of astrological kind of goddess magic, witchery, animal communication people instead of going to therapy or getting soul retrieval. You know, I mean, like
Michelle Tea: Soul retrievals.
Nicole Georges: Being in Portland.
Michelle Tea: Oh, is it a big soul retrieval community
Nicole Georges: At a certain time? It sure, sure was.
Michelle Tea: I had a roommate doing soul retrieval in the 90s. Can you explain to our listeners? Like what exactly? Soul retrieval is maybe as two people who've never actually done it but have been a soul retrieval adjacent
Nicole Georges: It feels almost like inner child work. Honestly, it feels like traumatic things happened that made pieces of yourself split off or not get attended to or get harmed. And so then you kind of go through. This is completely just guessing based on what my friends have told me. Okay, so then you go through and you kind of tend to nurture or say or like, let go or reabsorbed those parts of yourself,
Michelle Tea: OK, and you do it through like a deep meditation, right? Oh, there's definitely a shaman deep. Yeah, there's a shaman who takes you like down a rabbit hole and you see different animals. Who were leading them to different pieces of their of their soul, their fractured soul
Nicole Georges: To that some kind of fun, like a video game of your spiritual life.
Michelle Tea: Yeah, it does, actually.
Nicole Georges: Well, so currently the witchiest things that are happening for me. Art? Yes, I do candles. Mm-Hmm. I believe in them. For whatever reason, I incorporate spirituality into my life. I love rocks. I had to examine my relationship with like capitalism around spirituality and just the idea that I could like go to the cute store run by homosexuals, by my house and buy my way into having a spiritual interior or making my dreams come true.
Michelle Tea: OK, wait, stop and unpack that. So what happened?
Nicole Georges: You know what it was having a punk on my podcast. They came on Sagittarian Matters, and I live down the street from Spellbound Sky, which is a beautiful, beautiful store, but it basically.
Michelle Tea: That's a great crystal store.
Nicole Georges: We just got to really unpack like, OK, what does it mean to? What it like you can actually, if you are a witch, if you're if you have a spiritual practice, you could use any rock. That's true, but your intentions upon and to focus your intentions and focus what you want. Yeah. And also then Michelle, talking to you about the dubious ways that some of these rocks are acquired and the fact that some wonderful magic shops use things that I don't agree with at all, like palm oil. My like white passing spirituality is not worth the bad labor practices or the orangutan torture that goes along with some of the that's palm oil, right? Yeah, no problem.
Michelle Tea: Yeah, I was hip to this whole problem with the crystal through Dorie mid-night, who's a queer witch who was posting some stuff about it. And I was like, You know it always. I I like crystals so much like and it's true you don't need them. If you want to just like, go outside and grab a leaf from like that just was shed from a tree. Like, there it is there. Some Earth energy for you, like go pull a rock out of your front yard like it's just as good. But also crystals are so pretty. And I don't know. I have like my, my sun and my my mercury are in the seventh house, you know, which is ruled by Libra. So I like I really do like pretty shiny things. It's like so terrible.but all that said, it's like, yeah, it's like, where? Where are they coming from? Where are these things coming from?
Nicole Georges: But I do think it's funny when people take crystals and do crystal grids to heal the Earth. I've always thought that was very funny, even before I knew about the dubious mining practices because I'm like, But wait, y'all, like they were in the Earth. I took raw crude oil and I extracted it through fracking, and I am going to heal the Earth. What I'm going to do an anti fracking spell, I have to say, is Caroline Paqueta is the person who was on statutory matters talking about anti-capitalist witchcraft.
Michelle Tea: Well, cool. Well, you know, I love that in in your relative fiction podcast and in your calling Dr. Laura graphic novel that inspired it. There's the catalyst for for you learning about these family secrets and then learning way more about yourself than you bargained for. It all came from visiting like a storefront psychic, a storefront palm reader who was like uncannily correct. I often feel like those storefront site gigs are just like total hustlers and like, I don't know if they're really psychic. But you had a life changing experience with a psychic.
Nicole Georges: I'm going to tell you about it, and I want you to know that she has both. And so let me tell you what happened, and I got to tell you what we found out. My friend, whom I was dating sort of at the time, took me to see this palm reader. It was like a two for one coupon on the back of the newspaper, probably like $10 to get my palm read. And within five seconds, she said, Oh, I can see that you don't get along with your mom and you should talk to your dad more often. And of course, I said, Well, I can't do that because he's dead. And she said, just dead ass. Just, you know, maybe the man you think is your father is dead, but your real father is very much alive. And it just she just blew the doors off my reality. And listeners, it was true. I have been told since I was a baby that my father died when he was 33 of colon cancer. And so then when I'm like 21 or 22 and this woman's like, Oh no, he's alive. It just blew the doors off my reality. So that's kind of what Calling Dr. Laura is about. And that's what relative fiction the podcast follows that trail. But during relative fiction. Claudia, my producer and I just walked up and down the street where that woman had been trying to get clues about her. That original psychic. And we found out that she was maybe part of this ring of grifter, this grifter family that came to Portland that would do that kind of thing. Or they would say, You have dark energy. Give me this money and I'll get rid of your dark energy. Because she said those exact things to my friend I went with. She was like, I can tell you're on drugs, you're into something dark. Which, you know, anyway, my friend was like, well, I'm just wearing black and like, maybe I have an iron deficiency, but I'm not on drugs. People with more money than us, we obviously didn't have any money. She would offer to take the hex off of them for money. We met people that were like, If you find her, she owes me $6000. We found mug shots that might be her from this family who had just scammed people up and down the West Coast.
Michelle Tea: Oh my god.
Nicole Georges: So she was both psychic and a grifter.
Michelle Tea: OK, so some time psychic people are also criminals and sometimes criminals are pretending to be psychics. So you when you discovered that you had this family and then you went on to meet this whole side of a family that you didn't know? I'm really curious. Like, did that have any sort of spiritual impact on you? Did it have like a component that was that had like a spiritual dimension to it in any way?
Nicole Georges: Well, so when I got told this thing. You know, so my mom had obviously cut me off from this whole 50 percent of my genealogy, 50 percent of my biology was just a question mark on everyone's dad. Sorry, so when all this happened? I found out that, you know, I'm just going to spoil this for people and tell people that I missed meeting my dad by about a year he died and I have been told he was a con man my whole life, horrible person. And I found out that maybe that wasn't true and there were other parts of him, and he had looked for me my whole life and wanted to meet me and was heartbroken that my mom told me he was dead. The bigger spiritual piece for me. You know, aside from like being able to soften my heart a little bit to the idea of this person was I got to meet my grandmother who had been looking for me my whole life and. I really I saw genetics, like for the first time, I saw someone who looked like me, I saw someone whose brain worked like mine. I saw somebody who was like welcoming me into this family and this lineage of women. And then when she died. The day she died, I had this moment where I was in, I pulled over my car, I found out on the telephone I was in Oregon, in the suburbs. I pulled my car in a target parking lot to sit on my lunch break and just stare in grief in this like desolate target parking lot in the suburbs with like one scraggly tree with no leaves, a hummingbird just perched on it, which was her. And like an animal, she really liked a hummingbird. I never seen a hummingbird just sit on a branch. It just sat on a branch across from my car and just stared at me for like 20 minutes.
It felt unlikely and it felt like it felt like a spiritual moment or one of those kind of like the persons visiting you moments. So I do. I do feel I feel soul connected to her.
Michelle Tea: What was her name, Bonnie? And what was her sign?
Nicole Georges: And she was a Capricorn.
Michelle Tea: All right, there you go.I do want to talk to you a little bit about animals and like what is like your spiritual connection to animals because you're so devoted to animals, you're more devoted to animals really than anyone I know. Like having your work, being centered around animals, whether it's doing animal portraits or doing books about your animals, fetch being about your dog that passed, whether it's, you know, being in service to Paterno's career as an internet influencer. I mean, there's, you know, being a lifelong vegan. And I'm just wondering, is there a spiritual component to that? Do you believe in animal familiars, et cetera?
Nicole Georges: Well, I mean, I would call Ponyo my animal familiar, except for I feel like she deserves more agency than I would be giving her by being like, she's my spiritual. I don't know I want. I feel very lucky to have - Ponyo is a blind, one eyed pomchi is on Instagram on your, Georges.
Believe that we are the same as animals, we are animals. I feel as much, if not more spiritual way to animals than I do for humans. So I think it's species list for humans to be like our brains are so incredible that we're way above animals because we can frack and speak English, our whatever language, we're so much better. I just don't think that's true. So that's the that's my that's like my baseline is like my life, my career. I would like to help animals. The spiritual part of that, I mean, I just share heart moments with animals sometimes, and I just want to be able to help them however I can. Like, I trained to be an animal communicator at some point, and then I kind of put that down because I felt like a grifter. I felt that the training felt grifter to me, but then I realized what I was doing pet portraits. I was actually animal communicating.
Michelle Tea: Really.
Nicole Georges: In a different way. I was.
Michelle Tea: Like, What did that feel like for you?
Nicole Georges: It just feels like getting to spend time with their soul. I just feel like their energy. It just feels like really sitting. And I mean, it's all the things with any other kind of channeling where you're sitting with yourself, you're having to quiet yourself, quiet your mind in order to like, really understand, like, how does this animal look, what's the energy of this animal? And then translate transmitting that to paper? I mean, whenever I'm drawing anybody, I feel a little bit like I'm communicating with them, like, you're really having to channel them, you're having to put yourself in their shoes and really think about how they act, how that you're having to really observe it, just like, sink into that. So I'll never draw anybody I hate, like I never drew the past president. I never would. I couldn't do it. I don't want to spend time with that person. It felt like it feels like kind of like I heard a witch at the beginning of the presidency say that she wouldn't hex 45 because then that would give a spiritual, energetic tie between her and him. And I feel that way about people I dislike. Like, I feel like drawing and making portraits. I'm creating this spiritual tie between me and them, even just for that time. And so I don't want to mess with that.
Michelle Tea: Well, listen, I've got, you know, I got this deck of tarot cards here. I have the Crowley deck. Does it offend you now as a lesbian? OK, good. I'm going to yell, I'm going to use it and have a question for the tarot.
Nicole Georges: I want to know what's going to happen with the with the books I'm proposing. OK, I'm proposing a book based on relative fiction. OK, and I'm proposing a young adult book.
Michelle Tea: So you're just sort of follow up to calling Dr. Laura.
Nicole Georges: Yeah. But then I also wrote writing this young adult not graphic novel that's kind of based a little bit on my partner Katya and me. But as kids and one of the kids fakes her own death and runs away and it just sounds so fun, it sounds that I've never I'm so insecure about it. I never done that kind of thing before.
Michelle Tea: What do you mean? You haven't done it because there's some fiction in it.
Nicole Georges: It's fiction, and it's deliberately for young people instead of me feeling like I'm being mature and then young people finding it and realizing that I met them where they're at.
Michelle Tea: But you, you do have such a youthful voice as a Sagittarius. You always will. Your voice will always resonate with young people and have a youthfulness to it, and it makes sense it at some point, you know, you had to be as productive as an artist you are. You're going to need to do fiction sometimes. I can read on both of these things. OK. OK, so first first, I'm going to shuffle on the relative fiction book. So it's a book project that's based on the relative fiction podcast, which y'all should check out.
OK, so I'm picking three cards for relative fiction, and now I'm going to. Also, I'm going to shuffle and pick three cards on this young adult graphic novel that is a departure for you because you're going to be working in fiction making some stuff up. You're going to be deliberately speaking to young people as opposed to just landing there because you're a Sagittarius and you're just all. You're always going to just have, like a teenage perspective on life. So let's see what that looks like. So let's see relative fiction, ooh, that looks really good. It looks really good. Your first card here is the on and in the top deck. You know, it's a riff on the judgment card, but it's really also very much a departure from the judgment card. And it's very much in. It's it's a card of departure. I feel like this is so much a card of leveling up. It's about, you know, the, you know, the tarot deals and cycles. You're one through 10. All the aces are like new beginnings. There's a lot of new beginning energy in the tarot. This is new beginning, but like it's like leveled up, new beginning. It's like, you know, if you just look at this beautiful sort of blue portal here, it's like the Egyptian Sky Garden, but it's like you're just walking like beneath her like body. That's like blessing your advancement in the back there. There's it's very groovy. In the back is the old pharaoh who's like on the outs. He'd served his time. And then there's this little baby ghost baby who's going to be the new ruler. And so it's this idea that like, you're rising to a new occasion within your life and you might feel a little out of your league. You might feel like, Oh my god, I'm just a baby, but you will. You will grow into the role. So, you know, it's just sort of like a prestigious card. It's really great. And then your next card, nine of cups, happiness. So that's a big yes, this is a really great Pisces card. And then eight of wands swiftness, Mercury and Sagittarius.
You're so swift and witty, I bet that I bet this is you. So, you know, this is about things moving quickly, things moving in a positive direction you have it's about really great communication. It's the rainbow. It's like positivity. So these are just a bunch of yeses. So I love this.
With the alien card, yeah, I'm almost wondering if you're going to like, you know, find a larger press, a larger publisher, like a more prestigious publisher, somebody who has more access, more resources, able to give you more resources. I sure hope that's what it is, but it looks good. It looks like a good project to to keep on with. And now this other. Oh, it's so good to call for the for the young adult book. The centerpiece card. Here is the wheel of Fortune. So again, you have another major arcana that's very positive and very, very huge and about a big new change. This is again like kind of a leveling up kind of a card. I mean, this is so gorgeous. I love the wheel of fortune in this DEX. It's like a big amp. It's like all like gold and amethyst. It's like, so cool. Your other two cards are ones cards, which is the suit of fire, which is your Sagittarius energy. The first one, two of ones Dominion Mars in areas. It's like going for it. It's just like, you're just doing it, you're you're branching out, you're running with it. And this is really great energy because on the other side, here's the sad reality of having to finish a book of fiction. You have the valor card and it is a card of noble struggle. It's Mars and Leo. So Leo, you know, wants that. But you know, Mars is like a fighter, so there's more of a kind of a little bit of a struggle involved in the card valor. It's like it's a gas card.
Michelle Tea: It's very much like I can't. I can't. But you do, and you win. It's just like, it's kind of a whiny baby card in a way, but it is really saying like, it's hard and I'm like, Of course you got that because as I don't know, like as not to project my experience onto you, but also as a memoir writer, we both primarily write about our own life. Like the first time I sat down to do pure fiction, I was like, Oh my God, this is so hard. Like, you have to you have to pave the road. Like with memoir, the story's already told, you know what happened? You just get to kind of play with images and words. And but this is like you're building the ground up. And there were definitely points where I'm just like, baffled. Like, I don't know if this is good. I don't know if this means anything. So I think this is just like the struggle of like creativity. A creative struggle like to get to the end, so you might get a little pooped during it, but you will get through it, you'll create it. And it's going to be very it's going to be a very good project for you. I'm really excited.
Nicole Georges: Thank you.
Michelle Tea: Yeah, I'm so psyched. The both of your projects got these major arcana. Great vibe cards. Very cool.
Nicole Georges: I'm very excited. My agent was like, Are you sure you can work on two books at once? And I was like, You betcha.
Michelle Tea: It's really funny talking to like normal straight, like middle class people because you're just like, Don't you understand I've been working my ass off for for like crumbs since I was like 21 years old. Like, Yeah, I can work. I can do five projects at once with no guarantee of ever making a dollar off of off of any of them. No problem.
Nicole Georges: Well, to me, it's also like if I'm doing and this is just like a sustainability thing for anyone who's an artist. Like if you're doing memoir, that's hard re writing about like, you know, shitty family experiences or whatever, it's nice to have a side project that feels different or a little lighter because also you won't get bored or they're gonna be days where you can't do anything because you're waiting for edits or whatever and then your side project.
Michelle Tea: It's such a good idea, and I think you might be surprised that even though, like perhaps the young adult project might feel like the respite from the difficulties of of delving into family dramas, you might find that, like the memoir, might be a respite because you know what you're doing. So clearly, like, you really understand that terrain and you understand how to how to make that happen. I think they'll feed each other in a really good way.
Nicole Georges: Well, that's exciting.
Michelle Tea: It is exciting. Well, Nicole, thank you so much for being a guest here and talking about your amazing life. I love you. I love your Sagittarii and Capricorn in nature.
Nicole Georges: Thank you, Michelle. You're one of my favorite people in the whole world.
Michelle Tea: You're one of my favorite people. So that makes me so happy.
Nicole Georges: I just love you. I'm so glad you're on Earth and I can't believe how lucky people are. They get to listen to you on this podcast.
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Peter Anthony: Hello, lovely souls. My name is Peter Anthony. I am a teacher, artist and tarot reader. They have always had a special bond with the animals and that all the stages of my life, I have been blessed with many special bonds. I believe animal friends come into our life for a reason and they leave us when their job is done. This ritual is to honor their presence. It is a way to give thanks for your experience together in a way to assist you in living with this loss.
The supplies, you will need three candles. I like the small taper candles, they're about four inches tall and they're skinny. They come in different colors, and the colors that I am recommending are one white candle for cleansing purity and for blessings. One blue candle for your emotions around this loss and for emotional balance. And one pink candle for the friendship, for the love and sweetness you experienced. Incense is also needed. Palo Santo. I use a Palo Santo stick. And jasmine or lavender or something pleasant that you can have burning as you're doing this ritual. Paper and something to write with. This could be optional. You could also, instead of writing something down, you could formulate your thoughts or speak out loud as well. A picture of your pet is necessary and or some type of signifier like their favorite toy or a call or a leash, a dish, maybe some treats if you still have them around.
Find a comfortable location where you can be with yourself and not be disturbed. To begin light, the incense light, the Palo Santo. The candles will burn out, which is fine. Later, other incense. Then light the candles begin with the white candle to purify the energy. Then the blue candle, then the pink candle. Get comfortable. Breathe. And now is the time when you want to begin writing or began the conversation that you're about to have. In my situation, I did this ritual recently to honor my dog companion spirit. I wrote a letter. In this letter, I included my adoration for her, I included some special moments that we had together. I included a vague memory that I had. I wrote about her cool look. She had really distinct features. I mentioned some playful times. I was sure to thank her for what she gave me. For Spirit and I, it was about many things, but most importantly, it was about trust. She would have walked into a fire for me, and my lesson was to welcome trust. Trust is the best foundation for love. Lastly, in this letter, I included my love for her, and I thank her for the love that she gave me. I took another deep breath or two or more, and I sat until I felt the moment was complete. I let the candles burn down. Like I said, they are small and they will burn down in a short amount of time. If you need to blow out the candles, that is fine to. After this, I took a short walk around the spots where we would walk together. I came home and I enjoyed a nice treat. And I encourage you to do the same. Indulge in a sweet treat or a savory meal. But the point is to continue to enjoy some special time with yourself. You can listen to some music or dance or read or even take a nap. You deserve it. Grief is hard. I hope this helps. Thanks for listening.
Michelle Tea: Peter Anthony, thank you for that tender, vulnerable ritual. Spirit did have a cool look!
We hope that you enjoyed this episode of Your Magic, and that you’re able to connect to the magic of the animal world somehow, through your pets and familiars or those of a friend, through a snail crawling through your yard or a pigeon pecking in the street. Like us, they each have their own magic, their energy, their place in the cosmos.
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Michelle Tea: Thanks for tuning into Your Magic. You can support us — plus get access to a whole bunch of bonus content — at patreon.com/thisisyourmagic. Every dollar makes our work possible. Make sure you follow us on Twitter and Instagram @thisisyourmagic and subscribe to our newsletter at thisisyourmagic.com. You can rate us and subscribe right here on Spotify — do what you need to do to never miss an episode. You can email us at hello@thisisyourmagic.com, we would love to hear from you.
This episode was produced and edited by Molly Elizalde, Tony Gannon, and Vera Blossom. We got production support from Angelica Crisostomo. Our executive producers are Ben Cooley, myself, and Molly Elizalde. Our original theme music is by John Kimbrough.
Thanks for listening!