Spellling: Hot Villain Summer
As Tia Cabral has learned, sometimes to step into your power you have to be the villain. Known more widely as Spellling, Tia talks with us about her Taurean struggle to embrace villainy, her lucid whale dreams, and her spooky experiences with thrifting. Michelle Tea shares her own experiences and struggles with lucid dreaming before Vera Blossom gives us the how-to we’ve been looking for.
Tia Cabral: I used to have lucid dreams a lot when I was younger, and I think I've kind of sort of tapped out of the sort of like, I think, spiritual training it takes to kind of like be in that state so later in the year I'm trying to plan a little hibernation for myself where I can just get back into my spiritual zone.
[Music]
Michelle Tea: Welcome to Your Magic. I’m your host Michelle Tea, and today I am hanging out with Tia Cabral, the truly magical artist behind the music project Spellling. We’ll talk Taurus vibes, whale magic, dream ghosts and more. After that, our very own Vera Blossom shares her personal hot tips for lucid dreaming. Stay with us.
[Music]
Michelle Tea: The very first time I ever experienced a lucid dream, it was during a nightmare. I found myself running through a sort of overgrown lot, tall grass and cracked paver stones forming a makeshift path. I knew there was a man behind me, and I knew that he was chasing me, and whatever his plan was once i was caught, it wasn’t good. I was very scared in the dream – I’d lost sight of him, but felt he could jump out at me from anywhere, like a horror movie villain. But then, an incredible fact dawned on me: I was dreaming. None of this was real. Whatever the worst of this creep’s intent might be, I would not be actually hurt. And, now that I had woken up inside my dream, I wouldn’t even be scared. I stopped running, and stood there in the sunny, trashy lot. What would it be like to observe my own attack – something that I, like all femmes, have spent a fair amount of time dreading and avoiding. What would it be like to watch it without fear? What a strange experience. I waited for my attacker to round the bend, or hop out at me from the scraggly grass. He never showed up. The unexpected arrival of my consciousness scared him away.
What happened next is, I’m afraid to say, what happens whenever I become lucid in my dreams – I began searching desperately for someone to have sex with. I’m not proud of this – though, I guess I’m not exactly ashamed, either. I seem to find myself suddenly in a bathroom, banging on stall doors for someone to hump on like a horny dog. Ugh. Maybe I am ashamed. I find the paper dolls of my dream scape a bit hard to maneuver in spite of understanding that it’s all happening inside my imagination. Sometimes I have a bit of tawdry dream sex, often I just wake up. I’m almost always disappointed in myself for not having done something more spectacular in my astral state – not for nothing, but I can have sex in my waking life. Why not, say, fly? Strike up a conversation with a kitten? Beam myself into outer space? If the first hardest thing about lucid dreaming is figure out how to become lucid while dreaming, a close second is remembering to do something meaningful with the moment.
According to Buddhist thought, while our behavior in a typical dreaming state does not generate Karma – meaning, are not actions that will impact our fate in waking life - lucid dreaming is a whole other thing. Because actual consciousness is at play, it is possible that good deeds done while lucid dreaming carry the same spiritual weight as such actions taken in the real world; and, conversely, writes Andrew Holecek in the online Buddhist journal Lion’s Road, “If you merely indulge your fantasies, lucid dreaming becomes super-samsara.” Samsara is the earthly existence our souls are trapped in; according to Holecek, a lucid dream isn’t lesser than the ‘real world,’ but like the real world on steroids. He continues, “When intention is involved, even at the level of a dream, karma is created. Lucid dreams are not karmically neutral.”
Well, yikes! Like doing the right thing in waking life isn’t hard enough, now I got to worry about my dream karma, too? But, truly, the more I read about the spiritual potential of lucid dreaming – called Dream Yoga in Tibetan Buddhism traditions – the more intriguing and inspiring it sounds. In fact, I have to go now, so that I may tumble into a khole of reading on tantric practices meant to help a person understanding the actual foundation of reality – lucid dreaming is one of them. Spiritually speaking, we really don’t know what our dreaming is all about, especially when you think of the many mystical assertions that even our waking life is but a dream. Maybe it could be worth it to take our dreamtime more seriously?
Here’s Tia Cabral
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Michelle Tea: Hey Cabral! Thank you so much for being here on Your Magic.
Tia Cabral: Yeah, this is so fun. Thank you for inviting me.
Michelle Tea: I'm really so inspired by all of your use in your work with like costumes in this sort of shapeshifting vibe that you have. And I was wondering if you could speak on that at all and if there if there's a magic in that for you or where where did that impulse what does that impulse feel like for you?
Tia Cabral: I think a part of my just like visual art background came in to… When it came down to putting myself out there on stage in this need to kind of just transform and like tap into the alchemy of delivering this ritual of a performance I need to like I just need to transform myself and like, yeah, the aesthetics are very important to me and hopefully I want to start making my own costumes. That's next level.
Michelle Tea: That is next level. And is it is it true that like right now anyway or historically, you have thrifted a lot of the stuff that you work with?
Tia Cabral: Yes, absolutely thrifted. Definitely. We have a stack of like. Items that have been thrifted and not incorporated. But I won't give up on them and I won't let them go.
Michelle Tea: Better give them a few tries, you know? Yeah, I really understand that. What sign are you?
Tia Cabral: I'm a Taurus. So yay!
Michelle Tea: Happy birthday! Oh, my gosh.
Tia Cabral: My birthday is May 13th, so it'll be Friday the 13th this year.
Michelle Tea: Oh, that's so fun. Are you going to do anything special? Spooky, anything at all?
Tia Cabral: My only dream for my birthday is to go whale watching.
Michelle Tea: Oh that’s so cute!
Tia Cabral: I want to see a whale. I have this big affection for whales. They're the, like, guardian of my dream world. So my friends and I are going to go whale watching in Monterey.
Michelle Tea: That's a gorgeous thing to do on your birthday, and I love that whales are the guardian of your dream world. Like, what does that mean for you?
Tia Cabral: I think it all started with. Have you seen the movie Whale Rider?
Michelle Tea: Oh, my gosh. A long time ago. Yeah.
Tia Cabral: It's early 2000s yeah, I think that movie has, like, just gone into my psyche since I saw it as a kid. Yeah, just since then, I've had reoccurring dreams, landscapes with whales popping in and out, just like. It started with this very repeat narrative of me on a boat or out on the ocean and then seeing humpback whales. And then I just had this like very like magnetic instinct to jump in the water and, like, submerge. And it was just this, like, really beautiful feeling of surrender and empowerment. So that started happening in like my early twenties and has just persisted like up until now. And now it's kind of morphed so much so it's like not that same narrative. It's just like a really basic dream, I'm just doing basic stuff, like shopping or like out in the world and like, a whale would just pass by in the dream. And I'm like, Oh, there it goes. So it's kind of morphed into this reminder that I'm dreaming, or just like this reminder that, like, I feel like it's just like an assurance that you're safe and you're grounded and you're good. I want to know more like. I hope to talk to someone like a psychic or an intuitive about where this is coming from.
Michelle Tea: So beautiful. What a wonderful recurring dream to have. It sounds so peaceful and really magical. Have you ever had the experience of lucid dreaming?
Tia Cabral: I used to have lucid dreams a lot when I was younger. And I think I've kind of sort of tapped out of the sort of like, I think, spiritual training it takes to kind of like be in that state lately because I've just been like having like I was just touring. Just like so much like logistical information and like rational information on my brain that I kind of just like when it's time to sleep, there's no room. Later in the year I'm trying to plan a little hibernation for myself where I can just get back into my spiritual zone.
Michelle Tea: Oh, that's so great. Are you going to do that like a staycation? Are you going to go somewhere inspiring?
Tia Cabral: Yeah. I want to do, like, a Kate Bush Hounds of Love nature retreat and just have, like, a synth, redwoods trees, a cabin. I don't know. And just only make music. That's what I romanticize so much is just like isolation, music-making. Let's do it.
Michelle Tea: Oh, it sounds like such a Taurus dream also, like, really like in your element. I hope you make that happen for yourself. That sounds incredible. I had a funny question for you as a thrifter. Do you ever feel like… Do you ever had a feeling about an item of clothing that you could feel the energy of its past owner? Or like, do you feel like your closet is haunted sometimes with so many secondhand pieces of clothing in it?
Tia Cabral: I don't think I've ever had that distinct feeling, but it has happened with furniture. Like I live in Oakland right now, but I lived in Berkeley for a long time when I was at UC Berkeley and I lived with all of my closest friends in this house on Telegraph, and we would often just like take in furniture off the street. And it was just like a, like a constant, like, carousel of furniture and things from outside. And I had this armchair in my room sitting in the corner, and I was very attached to it. It was like very ornate, golden with like little, like, feathery, whispery patterns. And I got a very strong that was one of the nights I had a lucid dream and also had like this ancestor connection with what felt like an ancestor from my mom's side. Sitting in the chair and like in the dream, she was sitting in the chair, like, talking to me. [49.9s] [00:08:30]I felt like I woke up and saw her sitting there and I tried to like talk to her and speak, but it was like, you know, the frozen feeling of at lucid a dream where you're, like, trapped between. [9.5s] [00:08:43]And my mom and her, like, family have like they grew up in Oakland. And so there's definitely like and the house that we lived at her childhood home was just a block away on Alcatraz. So I'm like, okay, “What's going on here?”
Michelle Tea: It's like, who knows what the energy of that chair was that resonated somehow with, like, ancestor energy. Yeah. Right. In such a, like, a place that's loaded with your family's vibes. That's so cool.
Tia Cabral: Yeah, I was a little bit freaked out afterward. Was like, maybe will move it from my room into the living room. It's just like I already have a very small room and the presence of my ancestors, you know, like, I need a little personal space.
Michelle Tea: Totally. Have you seen, had the experience of seeing spirits or ghosts or, you know, anything like that aside from this experience?
Tia Cabral: Pretty much isolated to the dream realm. I think that's where my most poignant experiences like that have happened but in real life, I'm always very actively hoping to have a paranormal encounter. And I feel like everyone around me has and I haven’t and I'm just like, “Well.”
Michelle Tea: I don't know that that one with the chair and your ancestor sounds pretty paranormal.
Tia Cabral: I really want to see a UFO. That's what I'm actively searching for in the skies. Any little glimmer, a glimpse. And I'm like, it's just hasn't happened yet.
Michelle Tea: Well, if you're ever in Arizona, if you're in Sedona, they do straight up UFO tours, though. Like, we'll take you out to the desert and you'll see a UFO. I'm like, How can you guarantee that?
Tia Cabral: I like certainty. It's like the whale tours to they're like, if you don't see a whale money that guaranteed but that's a little bit more reliable.
Michelle Tea: Oh my god can you imagine? You know, I know that it's in some of your songs, you reference every incarnation. Like I'm gathering that you but do you believe in it or is it just sort of like an openness towards it? Or what are your thoughts about it?
Tia Cabral: Reincarnation to me – I love, like, I do believe in reincarnation. And I believe in , like, lifetimes and, the ability to remember lifetimes. I have an affinity for animals a lot and so I like to think of like in a past life I have definitely been a whale and I think that's where that like dream realm is coming from. Categorically, it's hard for me to say like I believe in this or that. I think like. It's something I'm really interested in. And I think through the music I love to explore, like what it could mean to be a reincarnated. And like that you could just reincarnate yourself on a daily basis, however you choose.
[Music]
Michelle Tea: So I would love to play cards for you if you're up for it and if you have a question.
Tia Cabral: I've been kind of hearing on the Internet this idea of like the villain era in Taurus season. I don't know if you've picked up on that, but like–
Michelle Tea: The Villain era? I haven't! I'm very intrigued. What does this mean and how does it relate to Taurus season?
Tia Cabral: From what I understand, it's just like sort of this funny projection of self care and sort of setting boundaries and like sort of reclaiming the idea of, you know, this is my time, this is what I want. And I think that it's speaking to me because I've always had a struggle with sort of asserting my own yeah, my own path and as a Taurus, just sort of this tension of wanting to be very reclusive and be. Internal, but the like tension also of what I do and the path of my career, just like putting me out there at all times. So I'm just trying to find the balance of yeah, I want to really figure out asserting what I want as a pretty, you know, like introverted performance artist. And so yeah, I guess my question is kind of is like. What does it look like for me to just yeah, assert my boundaries in a productive way as a touring musician, as just like a musician who's who struggles a lot with personal, like, personal boundaries?
Michelle Tea: Okay. Yeah, that's great. Oh, my God. Hot Villain summer. That's what we're going to have. I love it. Okay. Do you know what your other astrological stuff are?
Tia Cabral: Yeah I'm an Aries Rising. I think that's what gets me out of bed.
Michelle Tea: Oh, yeah.
Tia Cabral: And a Taurus moon.
Michelle Tea: So as an as an Aries Rising, you have a natural chart. Maybe you've heard that before. Like your Taurus moon is all going to be in the house of Taurus. So you're extra Taurus. I mean, you're extra Taurus-y anyway with that Taurus moon, but then to have your Taurus, sun and moon, I'm guessing in the second house of Taurus, like, wow, it's incredible. You have a very you have a powerful Aries rising because you should definitely be living in a mud hut somewhere like. Thank you for sharing that. That's really great. Okay, so what would it look like for you to really like seeing this is a sort of like you're arousing some aspect of yourself that's that's there, but maybe a little dormant are not sure how to come out like not quite sure how to, you know, express itself that and it's around boundaries and being assertive and taking up space and going after what you want and letting like your needs rule. The day sucks sound, right?
Tia Cabral: Yeah, absolutely.
Michelle Tea: You know, when I'm giving these readings to people in those cards come up, I'm always like, This is your time to be incredibly selfish. And, you know, people can feel like they're guilty in advance, even just being told that they feel like they've done something wrong, you know? And it's like, no, it's okay to be really selfish sometimes. Like, it's okay to be really selfish a lot of times. And you got one of those cards. Oh, my God. The ones that I'm talking about. Two of wands dominion. This is. Wow. Okay. So, you know, picked three cards for you. And the very first one feels like, okay, you know, if this part of you is sort of caged a little bit and needs to come out of its enclosure, the enclosure is this nine of swords, cruelty card. Right. You know, I see the cruelty card as self cruelty as, you know, voices that, you know, the culture and other unfriendly, you know, faceless things have put into our heads about like, you know, how we can't have what we want. Right? I do always think with this card I always flush on the right or wait how it's the card with the person having nightmares, the opposite of a beautiful whale dream, you know. So it's like, okay, what? You know, in what way is it scary to you to imagine this? You know, in what way is it truly villainous? And it can be fun to get inspired and talk about being a villain. But then like, what part of yourself is more in the back there when it's time to get real saying like “God, but does this mean I'm a villain? Like, I don't I don't want to be, I want to be like loving. I want to be love.” And it's like, you know, there doesn't look like a soft path. A gentle path out of that. It looks like storming the gates here with this Aries energy. It really is like, you know, like this just isn't going to work for you anymore. This is these are two Mars cards and Mars is the Aries planet. Do you know what your Mars is in by any chance?
Tia Cabral: I want to say my mars is in Cancer.
Michelle Tea: In Cancer? Oh, gosh. Well, that would be hard. Okay. That would be really hard.
Tia Cabral: I'm a softy.
Michelle Tea: Oh, such a softy and your Cancer is in the fourth house of Cancer. So you'll have a Cancer, Mars in the fourth house, never wanting to hurt anyone's feelings.
Michelle Tea: This is like the battle of good and evil that's going on in your particular, you know, psyche. It's almost like you got to let the pendulum swing all the way to the other side in a really major way, take some chances and see what happens. You know, the card the card following this is this two of wands and it's Mars in Aries. You know, here's Mars. The nine of swords is Mars in Gemini. So in a sense, you know, it's it's overthinking it at the expense of taking action, you know. And this is all action. This two of wands is just like, you got to drop out. You just draw the boundary. It's okay. If it's not perfect, it's okay if it's sloppy. It's okay if you go back later on and you tweak it a little and go, okay, actually, I can allow for that. Or, you know, but if overthinking things is stopping you, if that sense of guilt or some sort of like loyalty to to situations other than yourself, people, places, things other than you, if that's holding you back, it's almost wanting. I feel like the message that tarot is telling you is just, you know, do it, just do it, do it hard. You can clean it up later if you need to clean it up later. And the knight of wands is popping up saying I second that. Yes absolutely!
Tia Cabral: Yeah.
Michelle Tea: It really is. I just this is so funny. I just was reading about this card last night in the in the actual like Alexander Crowley, book that goes with it, the book of Toth. And it's you know, I see this card is such an Aries card because it really is fire upon fire. You know, the wands is fire. The knight is fire.
Tia Cabral: I see it as like this trailblazer. Referencing back to kind of what I was saying about like I see my spiritual arc as this like calling towards making and having a lot of tension around who is the artist who gets to make things and kind of like setting myself back because I don't see myself like fitting certain categories in a lot of like. A reluctance built up around that. And yeah, that you need to have the certain deep grit or substance or charisma to be like a real trailblazer and to be a real artist. So I think I spent a lot like a large part of my life feeling that I didn't like, I didn't fit those categories. And then that kind of just distracted me from this. Like, yeah, this like underlying calling towards like, yeah, this can be me and I can evolve towards those things. And right now especially I notice like I'm embracing those aspects of myself.
Michelle Tea: I love that. I'm so happy for you. It's so interesting to hear you talk about this. I mean, that kind of I don't know, like it's like a it's like a distant cousin, a second cousin of, like, imposter syndrome or something. It's like, I don't fit in the world. And, you know, it's like it's so, you know, I get to interview in this podcast. I'm so fortunate, like artists that I really admire, like yourself. And it's so, it's always so striking to hear things like this because from the outside you are nothing but a trailblazer and you clearly have so much grit and you know, you have all of this, like, magic, and it's like we all just want to see so much more from you. Yeah, I mean, this is what I think this nine of swords is talking about in your life is that that, you know, the overthinking that kind of held you back, you know, and you know it being in Gemini, that's really interesting also because Gemini there, you know, there's a there's something about them. There were they're about duality. And so that is a little black and white thinking, right? It's like you're either like, you know, in order to be successful, you need to be like this. But I'm like this, so I can't take that path. But just being like I can take a fucking path I want like I'm a creature on the planet with these desires and talents and interests, and I'm just going to blaze my own trail towards it and invite you all to come with me. And that just looks beautiful for you and super successful. I love it. I feel like, yeah, it's all about leaving. Like letting that just burn off like a fog. Like the ten of swords just burns off like a fog with the with the the the motion of your, you know, trajectory.
Tia Cabral: Thank you so much.
Michelle Tea: You're so welcome. Yeah. Yeah. Can I ask you how old you're. You're turning. I'm just curious about, like, transits and stuff like that, you know, astrologically.
Tia Cabral: I'll be turning 31.
Michelle Tea: Okay. Yeah. All right, cool. You past your Saturn return.
Tia Cabral: Yeah.
Michelle Tea: Heading towards the Christ. You're not quite there yet.
Tia Cabral: Yeah.
Michelle Tea: Really good. This is really good. I love this for you. I hope you have a really excellent, excellent birthday. And you're going back on tour. Yes.
Tia Cabral: Yeah, well, a little mini tour. I'm going to Europe at the end of May and doing some festivals out there. It'll be like half tour, half like just exploring and being out there for the first like the first time ever. So.
Michelle Tea: Wow. I bet there's some amazing, like, European whale watching that you can do out there, like off the coast of Ireland or something. Can you imagine like.
Tia Cabral: Yeah. Let's keep the energy! Taurus season all year.
[Music]
Vera Blossom: Hi, I’m Vera Blossom, a producer here at Your Magic. I also used to be an avid lucid dreamer. So, today, I’m sharing a method that can help to induce the state of lucid dreaming – the act of being conscious in your dream and controlling your surroundings. Lucid dreaming can have a few benefits – it’s been shown to help relieve anxiety and can reduce the negative side effects caused by PTSD. It can help you overcome recurring nightmares by helping you realize when you’re having a bad dream and allowing you to change the circumstances of said nightmare or even wake yourself up.
There are a few methods to induce lucid dreaming, but here’s what almost always works for me and disturbs your sleeping pattern the least.
1. Get to bed an hour before you want to sleep. Make sure the room is dark and comfortable. A room that is too warm or too cold will be distracting. Complete darkness helps you sink into your consciousness and away from reality.
2. Lay on your back and stare at the ceiling.
3. You’re going to pick something I like to call an “anchor”. This is a distinct object that will both draw you into a dream and also help you realize it’s not reality. You’ll look for this anchor in the dream to wake up your consciousness while still asleep.
a. For me, it’s easiest to imagine I’m cruising down a highway in a red convertible, something I’ve never done in real life. This means my anchor is a red car. I find it helpful to pick an anchor that is a physical object with obvious characteristics and, for a lack of better words, distinct and meaty aura. For you, it might be an old school desk, or a purple couch, or maybe something like a crystal goblet. Something weird that you can feel, touch, maybe even sit in.
4. Imagine your anchor in your head and chant its name to yourself over and over again for the next hour while trying to fall asleep. In my case, I’d chant “red car, red car, red car, red car…” This part is difficult, but it helps my brain stay on a specific track while I fall into a dream.
5. Once you’re In the dream, look around for your anchor. Let that object chain you down to your dreamscape. You have to maintain a sort of zen state where you’re aware that you’re in a dream but not too aware that you’re in a dream. Becoming too conscious can wake you up or make the dream sort of freeze in place and glitch out. When I do this, I focus on my frontal lobe, flex it, and imagine an empty pool where my third eye is. Will yourself to not know you’re in a dream, even though, you fully know you’re in a dream.
If you can maintain this limbo state of knowing and not-knowing, you have full control of your dream. Go where you want, fly around in the sky, give yourself superpowers, or go on an adventure in a gigantic and mysterious old hotel (these are all dream adventures I like to do.)
Lucid dreaming can help you reclaim control in your life when you’re feeling helpless to the whims and chaos of the universe or those around you. It’s a lot of fun. But, here are some warnings. Be mindful of when you feel confused about when you’re dreaming or awake. If you find yourself sleeping for more hours in the day than you’re awake, or if you’re losing grip on what’s real and what isn’t – you should stop trying to lucid dream or limit how often you attempt it. If you find yourself stuck in a dream you want out of, you can use your anchor as an emergency escape hatch. Go and find or manifest your anchor wherever you are in your dream and use it to remember that you’re asleep and can wake up at any time.
Be safe and enjoy your new dream life!
[Music]
Michelle Tea: Yes, I really, really love this. I freaked out at a Your Magic production meeting when Vera shared she had this personal practice of lucid dreaming, and I am so, so glad she’s sharing it with all of us. I’m very much itching to give this technique a try.
Whatever you’re dreaming this week - lucid dreams, psychedelic dreamscapes, floaty daydreams, creepy nightmares, we hope you’re able to wring a bit of insight from it, if not about the nature of our shared reality, then at least something about your own psychological state. And, of course, may all your most lovely dreams come true.
[Music]
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, Kirsten Osei-Bonsu, and Vera Blossom. Our executive producers are Ben Cooley, myself, and Molly Elizalde. Our original theme music is by John Kimbrough.
Thanks for listening!