Brontez Purnell: Pondering the Edge of the Universe
What is life? What is the universe? Writer and punk-for-life Brontez Purnell joins us for a conversation about ancestors, superstition, and where our bodies go when we make art. Then, creator of the African Goddess Rising Oracle Deck, Abiola Abrams, offers a mason jar spell for self-love, dedicated to the goddess Oshun.
Brontez Purnell: Theater is like my religion. Like I remember when I first started writing it, my rule was I had to be able to recite it like a monologue before I could write it down to make sure it all felt right. Like looking back now, I'm just like, It's like, that's a theater thing or like, that's you conducting a sermon or something feeling like, oh, this has to punch in just this right way.
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Michelle Tea: Hello and welcome to Your Magic. I’m Michelle Tea, and today I’m hanging out with one of my favorite people ever, writer, musician, and punk-for-life, Brontez Purnell. We’ll talk about traditional African religion, dance, altars and more. Then we’ll hear from Abiola Abrams, creator of the African Goddess Rising Oracle Deck and author of The African Goddess Initiation. She has a gorgeous, magical jar spell dedicated to the goddess Oshun. Stay with us.
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Michelle Tea: Hey listeners, if you’re in the Los Angeles area, or maybe you’re looking for a reason to take a road trip, we invite you to the latest Your Magiv Live! Our IRL, mystical talk show, hosted by me, Michelle Tea. It’s on Thursday, December 2 at 2220 Arts & Archives at 2220 Beverly Boulevard. Our special guests are wild. Alicia Garza, Fran Tirado and Rose Dommu, Grace Lavery. Oh my gosh. Ashley Ray, Bett Williams, Rosemary Carroll. It’s going to be wild. Can you handle it? We think so. Tickets are $15 at 2220arts.org/events if you get them now. They’re also $20 at the door. This event is 21+ so that you can have a cocktail. See you there.
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Michelle Tea: Listen up listeners. Your Magic is looking for an intern. We are losing our beloved Raven Yamamoto to the killer podcasting job they just scored as a result of the skills they picked up in this role and now we’re looking for a new person to join our team. The pay is meager but realistically, Your Magic is an independent production, with no financial backing and all of us do work other jobs. That said, we’ve got $300 a month for this internship and we promise to load you up with so many new skills, you’ll be leaving us for your dream media job in no time. You can learn more about the position on Your Magic’s LinkedIn page. And if it sounds like a fit, send your resume to hello@thisisyourmagic.com We can’t wait to meet you.
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Michelle Tea: Here’s why I think that occultly, witchy, folk practices, woo practices — whatever you want to call it — is so great for artists and creative people. First, they engage our imagination. Creative people want to create, and established religions don’t allow for much of that. When I approach my altar, it’s on me what’s going to happen. While there are traditions and spell recipes available for me to enact, there is no script or expectation. I get to pick what I’m going to do and who I’m going to devote it to. Not only is this type of independence and reliance on my inner impulses totally in sync with the general artistic demeanor, but I get to imagine whatever deity I want to pledge it to, I get to imagine a version of my higher self if I’m going deity-free, I get to visualize the desired effects of the ritual I’m creating. If I want to crib off the imaginations that came before me I can, or I can go 100 percent into my own creativity. I love that.
Another reason why I love these practices for artists, especially folks working to make a living off their art, is, we need all the help we can get. I’m not kidding! When so much of our professional lives are out of our control, it can feel really great to cast a spell for inspiration or success. When the forces of capitalism make us feel like we have to be some other type of person to achieve our goals — someone less weird or femme or poor or messy or queer or of color — we can cast a grounding spell to re-root us back into our perfectly weird and messy selves. We can cast a fiery spell that affirms our right to be, a spell that dares call down victory on our open terms.
Here’s Brontez Purnell.
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Michelle Tea: Hello, Brontez. Welcome to the show, thank you so much for being on Your Magic again. You're like a friend of the pod now.
Brontez Purnell: I'm loving it.
Michelle Tea: I feel like you're having such a big year. Like, you got a grant to do like a, you know, a version of your book as a movie. And of course, your book 100 Boyfriends came out in the last 12 months, and now you're like, going to be the centerfold for Fantastic Man. And what I think about you and ever, I see these rad things happening for you. I'm always like Brontez has done this 100 percent on his own terms. You, you have always remained wild as fuck. So punk. Like, it's so inspiring. And it's such a great testimony to like, you don't have to dumb yourself down. You know, you can really just be like, your crazy queer ass self and have a life and have an art career.
Brontez Purnell: I needed to hear that.
Michelle Tea: It's important Brontez. You're like an icon. You're doing a lot. Let me ask you if you have a spiritual practice.
Brontez Purnell: Yes. I definitely practice like a weird hodgepodge of like certain African traditional religions informed by Southern Hoodoo. Informed very peripherally about, you know, run of the mill white ass honky Wiccan magic, which I also love. And I just kind of take the things that are the most poignant to me or bring the most true to me and build upon like practices. I don't know. I've been taught since basically I was a kid here and there like, you know, grow up upset growing up down south. What weird folklore. Little folklore is passed down about magical practices or this or that, and then building up on that from, like, you know, coming here and what I studied and, you know, being in the Bay Area, which is like. I don't know, it's it's really great to be in such a like a really magical, like fertile place or whatever where neo paganism is like not even like a deal. Like I go to Ancient Ways and it's just like a swath of so many people. And it's like, we don't have to feel like weird or dumb or, you know, like we're like talking like crazy shit. It’s just like, you know, we have like a definite spiritual practice that has to be honored. And I don't know, I think, helps keep me grounded a lot.
Michelle Tea: You talked about this a little bit on on the show when you did, you offered a really amazing get rid of your roommate spell for us. But but I think a lot of the the context for your larger spiritual practice, I don't think we got that. What did you what kind of stuff did you grow up with - do you have memories about like when you first learned about like? I don't know spirituality or magic or…
Brontez Purnell: Well, I like I don't know, there is always just like, oh no, like weird, superstitious stuff that kind of pops up, you know, like, don't sweep my feet this that the other.
Michelle Tea: Don't sweep your feet.
Brontez Purnell: Yeah just don’t. I've asked everyone in my family why we don't and like everyone, will have different answers. So I just like I like I like. I like stuff like that, like where you don't know where the myth was invented, but it's just it's no less real because everyone just knows the baseline is don't let a broom touch your feet. But then, you know, when I came here to the Bay and I started, I started dancing for this like contemporary Haitian company and meeting people who like, you know, practice within that world. And, you know, I felt like that world wasn't really that open to me because I don't know, like an African traditional religion, community, Ifa, Vodun. All of that. You know, you can sometimes run into like, you know, homophobia, traditionalism, all that fucking weird stuff. But also there was also this key of like, I don't know, one one kind of pagan mentor I worked with. He was a light dude, but it was really funny to hear him say this because like, I feel like that scene that I was in was really about, like practicing the most traditional and straight line, fucking like whatever practice you could. And he was just like, you know, Brontez like, you literally aren't an African boy from the 1500s. It's just like, you know, magic is really about where you at. You grew up on different soil, different air composition, different minerals.
Michelle Tea: Wow so he was getting granular and like earthy about about it.
Brontez Purnell: And he is like, You're like an American boy, like you are an American boy. Like, you know, like think of how many white people show up to Orisha practices and all this other stuff. But like in the in the DNA of America, these practices all are kind of us, I don't know, like these really traditional realms we came from in the old world. Did they ever consider that we would all be convening and meeting with each other? Hell fucking 60 years ago me and you would not be fucking talking to one another in a public. You know, I'm saying so it's just like of all these kind of these fractured histories, like all come to a head, it's like of course. I'm going to like Vibe with something from like a course. I'm going to vibe from something from African traditional religion. Of course, I'm going to do like like there's like hoodoo, which hoodoo was always kind of a weird hodgepodge of African traditional religion and shit that popped up from slave masters, all mixed together. So it's like, you know, I think in complication of being an American and the American, being American, being both like erase erasure of our culture. That's for everybody. From Irish-Americans to Italian-Americans to African-Americans to - once you hyphen something with American, it's like pretty sure that erasure is like the whole key to that.
Everyone unilaterally in America. Everyone gets erased. You know, I'm saying like, I'm not European-American is going to tell you shit about where they came from, really. You know, I'm saying, like, it's just it's just what it is. And so, yeah, and by extension of that, yeah, I talked to many gods. I have to to survive, essentially. Honey, the life I've had, I got to talk to any guy that's listening, that's where I'm at.
Michelle Tea: I mean, I feel like you got a good pantheon looking out for you. That's what I think. I remember seeing when I lived in San Francisco and you were doing dance performances, I got to go and see like I felt I could feel that there was a spiritual component to to some of it. Did you feel that in your dance? Was that like? Will you talk about the way that like dance, if it did, intersect with like you're thinking about spirituality or your practices.
Brontez Purnell: Well, just spirituality like in general. And I always thought like I was, I went to dance because I as a writer, it's just, you know, you want to explore like another language. And I was a really bad dancer for 10 years, but essentially, I think that that's what helped my writing practice the most.
Michelle Tea: How so?
Brontez Purnell: Like when you're in like a ballet class and your teacher is like press toes to rise and you're like, What the fuck is she talking about? But after being there for 10 years, it's just a way you like organize your foot muscles to ease up on your knees to get the most height out of it. And one day it's like it's a body practice. And after, like almost a decade, one day it fucking clicked. And that's when I was like, Oh, like all these weird riddles they tell you is actually like a language that's very specific for this. Do you know what I’m saying?
Michelle Tea: I do know what you're saying because I remember in like the early 90s, everyone was taking a belly dancing class and I got dragged to one. And I just remember the woman being like, like, lift your ribs and turn, and I'm like, What do you mean, lift my ribs? My ribs are like, where they are, like, move my like, I, you know, and I feel like it probably contributed to this idea I have about myself of being very out of my like, not very connected to my body and always having really loved like sex, drugs, and rock and roll because it really connected me to my body, you know, but there must be something about like, it must. It must keep you really present.
Brontez Purnell: Well, I don't know. It always just so went hand in hand because it's just like theater is like my religion. So it's like and so like, I remember when I first started writing it.
From that book, like from those essays, my rule was I had to be able to recite it like a monologue before I could write it down to make sure it all felt right. And I just remember that being like a kind of purity thing, but like looking back now, I'm just like, It's like, that's a theater thing or like, that's you conducting a sermon or something feeling like, Oh, this has the punch in just this right way. I'm just now moving free of that.
Michelle Tea: Wait, so are you telling me that you before you would write your like essays or your your pieces of writing? You wouldn't write, you wouldn't commit them to paper or the computer until you could recite it from memory?
Brontez Purnell: Yeah, most of Johnny was written that way.
Michelle Tea: Wow, that's really impressive. I just your I love your brain so much. And so it makes me want to ask you questions like like, what do you think happens when we die? Like, what is life? What is Earth? What is the universe?
Brontez Purnell: I always think about shit like that too, because I was exploring that like in my writing, because part of me too is like, I don't know. Like, for some reason, I'll get hooked up and be like, what's at the edge of the universe? And I got like Google that question 10 times a month. And essentially, no one can tell you because they're just like, Well, the problem is, every place we look seems to mirror like this other place we look. So maybe we're just in this big curved ball or like when they're like explaining space time and like they're just like, Oh, no, like, fucking the sun is denting space. And that and we're curving around it. And I'm just like, Yeah, but how is the sun denting like, space, like...
Michelle Tea: Yeah, like what is happening? I love that. Like when you do deep dives into science, they're like, We don't shrug now. Like, we don't know. We don't know what's happening. And you're like, Oh my God, like, nobody knows. And to me, that actually really feeds my spiritual practice in a way, or it feeds my spiritual self. It's like, Yeah, I like the idea that, like science and spirituality, like, have nothing to do with each other. I'm like, No, there is like whenever I whenever I get a real glimpse at how vast our ignorance is, it's it's shocking and it's kind of scary and kind of inspiring. And I'm just like, Yeah, that's there's a huge unknown, and I'm just going to be in service of it and like, that's my spirituality.
Listen, what does your what is your spiritual practice look like in a real, like embodied physical way? Like, do you keep an altar? Do you do rituals like, what are you up to?
Brontez Purnell: I keep, yeah, I keep my ancestral altar. I burn candles as time and space will allow. I have so many roommates, I can't go too crazy, so I do it respectfully. I keep. I keep the water up. Lately, though, I've been like because I've always been such a heavy picture person like my altar's, just like so crammed full of pictures. But I think it's time to. I want to move away from that because I think the idea is like when the people surrounding you become ancestors, they like, represent an energy and not a physical form. And I think, you know, it helps humans to just have some type of anthropomorphic form to think or whatever. But it's just like. Yeah, I do want to switch into thinking about my ancestors and myself as an energy or like a total ether. You know, that's just kind of constant and like swerving like ancestor worship is literally like, you cam go really woo with it. But then you also be like, This is the set of cells that I am generated from, you know? And like connecting you to something real. It can be real secular too.
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Michelle Tea: Well, I definitely want to ask you if you want a tarot reading. What do you want to know about Brontez?
Brontez Purnell: What's going to happen when I'm 47? That's too broad, right.
Michelle Tea: You're just going to get pictures of like swords and cups, and it's like, I don't know, are you going to say that right? You know, so at some, I mean, what we can do is we can, we can. We can definitely say, what's the vibe of 47, right?
Brontez Purnell: What's the vibe of 47?
Michelle Tea: What is the vibe of 47? What's the energy of 47? And is that how old you're going to turn the summer? 47.
Brontez Purnell: No. I'm like 39.
Michelle Tea: OK, stop the presses. OK, you're in. You're in your late 30s and you want to know what it's going to be like. What ten years from now?
Michelle Tea: But OK, so why? 47. Why do you want to know what's going on when you're 47?
Brontez Purnell: Because I feel like all my friends who are like kind of fuck ups in, like, got it together, they were like, yeah, like my forties were kind of like my early forties, like we now were an echo of my late thirties. But then, you know, right about the mid to late, that's when things like kicked in and I became an adult and I'm like, Well, damn near 50. OK, fine. OK. So I'm just like, I want to know what the start of that process is, what the vibe will be.
Michelle Tea: OK, so what's the vibe of of the the 47th year for a diehard punk fucking art weirdo like yourself? What does, what is 47 looking like? Let me see. OK I'm going to pick three cards. It looks really fucking good. Brontez. That's wild that you have developed some sort of philosophy about quote adulting or just like how people like figure out how to fucking live like a life that's not a dumpster fire that has some sort of stability that maybe like even stepping into. Like, I know that you've got punk rock damage, like you've just got to like that whole thing of like, how do you even when you've come up through punk rock? How do you even, you know, punk rock is such a huge umbrella for just like. Being an outsider, being having radical politics, being queer, you know, just like not having money developing like survival skills around, maybe not needing or wanting money, you know, because it doesn't even seem like an like an option, right? So then like how do you figure out how to step into like, damn, maybe I want nice things like maybe I want, you know, a career or whatever it is. OK. So your forty seventh year the Universe best card in the tarot deck, right? It's the card. It is a beautiful card. It is the card of destiny. It's the card of just like stepping into your gorgeous destiny. All is as it should be. All is like beautiful. Like it's fantastic. And then this is wild. The next card you got is a card that I often call the Universe card of the minor arcana, and it's the Three of Wands. And especially in this, the Thoth deck that I'm reading with Three of Wands is called Virtue. And so the idea like what? You know, virtue, what's virtue? What they're talking about is that, you know, wands are our energy. It's like our life force, our energy, our passion. And with this card, it's like all of your energy has been focused in the perfect direction. You've done all the right things energetically. And because of that, when this card comes up, you're getting like, it's like, I always say it's a pat on the back from the universe. And look, there's like the universe card is patting this card on its back. So it's gorgeous. It's also it's Sun in Aries. And you know, I think that the the symbolism of that is just like, you know, the Sun is sort of we live in this, you know, we do the sun centric sort of Western astrology. So the Sun represents like us at our best, us when we're shining. And then Aries, you know, those sort of like best idea of areas is just like, completely self-centered. But like in a good way, like not not in an obnoxious, bad Aries way, but in that way where you're just like, I know myself, I'm connected with my energy. I have plentiful energy. I'm connected with it. I know who I am, I know what I'm here to do and I'm doing it. So that is gorgeous. And then like if we are talking about like stability and adulting and all that shit. Your final card, Eight of Disks, prudence. It's so it's Sun in Virgo. It's like all your ducks in a row, all your shits in the same bag. You know, it's coming towards the end of the cycle of disks. So there's been harvests, there's been toil, there's been work, there's been harvests. And now it's like you're organizing the harvest. It's like, OK the tree has sprouted its flowers. It's fruited, it's bloomed. And now it's growing these leaves to say to like, pull over the flowers saying like, OK, how are we going to preserve this? How are we going to take care of it? How are we going to nurture it? So it continues to grow and it's Prudence. So it is a little bit more like conservative in that way, right? You're like taking a step back and you're like, How do I, you know, how do I bring longevity into this? How can I keep this going? Is this sustainable? How can I sustain this? So yeah, man, and will you have the resources to sustain it? Yes. With that Universe card, will you have the energy and the wherewithal to sustain it? Hell, yeah. With the Virtue card like this is this is like the best case scenario answer for that question.
Brontez Purnell: I love that.
Michelle Tea: I love it, too. You're one of my favorite people in the world. I just want all the goodness to just rain on you continuously.
Brontez Purnell: I love you, Michelle.
Michelle Tea: I love you, Brontez. You're the greatest.
Brontez Purnell: I'm like, it's always good to talk to you. It's always good. I feel like I'm coming home.
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Abiola Abrams: Hi, there. I'm Abiola Abrams and I'm the founder of womanifesting.com, as well as the award winning and best-selling author of The African Goddess Initiation: Sacred Rituals for Self-love, Prosperity and Joy, and the African Goddess Rising Oracle Card deck.
So the ritual that I'm going to share in the book is a gift from Goddess Oshun. Goddess Oshun is a Yoruba goddess, and she shows up in almost every reading that I do for myself and for other people. She is a goddess of love and beauty. And this ritual actually has its background in African-American Hoodoo. And it's known as a sweetening ritual where you would use a jar like this a mason jar without one, without a straw, preferably, but a mason jar. And we would be doing it as a self-love ritual. But people can use this to sweeten relationships with employers. People use it for love spells, that sort of thing. What I would recommend is I am not a fan of manipulative magic. I say that if you are in a relationship already with someone and wanting to sweeten it, maybe this is something that you could do together. But in terms of trying to manipulate others or that sort of thing — that is not magnetic, that's not divine feminine energy — that's patriarchal energy. Our energy is magnetic.
And so Goddess Oshun, one of her sacred gifts is honey. So what you would do in this sweetening jar is that if you are wanting to use it, for example, as a self-love ritual, you could write on different pieces of paper. And I explain in the book exactly the way to do this. But you could write on different pieces of paper affirming in the positive things about yourself that maybe you are wanting to call in to your life, you know, so it could be, you know, you could write. Goddess Michelle is now calling forward. Write it in in the present tense. So Goddess Michelle has a worldwide global show that is an amazing phenomenon. Goddess Michelle counts among her fans Oprah, and she is on the list of Oprah's best podcasts. Goddess Michelle has a circle where she is pleased to go around the globe speaking to women who are feeling elevated by her journey. And so you could write these things on pieces of paper. You put them in the jar, and so then you want to add sweetening agents.
One of the fun things about hoodoo is that it's it's literal, it's a literal practice. And so you would sweeten the energy around it with honey whenever doing honey rituals. I love using local honey, the honey that is local to your location because it is more potent because it has it has your natural stuff in it. One of the things in Caribbean healing practices, we believe very firmly, for example, that if, say, a plant grows up on your, you know, we bring up some plant grows up on your in your garden that you didn't plant there. It's because you need something related to that medicine. So your local, you know where you are is very important. So this is New York honey. So I would use that. Then you can add things that are specific to you. So this is here. This is what we call sorrel in Guyana, where my family comes from it's hibiscus. So I would add this, you know, or tamarind, you could add something that is specific to you. I like to use Hershey's Kisses, for example, right? That's specific to us here in Western culture, it means love and all of those kinds of things. And then you could add some moon water. So this is some water from the last full moon, and you then would blow on it three times before sealing it so that it gets your life-force energy. So you would blow so that it gets your ashe, your life-force energy and then you're wanting to shake the jar up and awaken it. Kind of you want to come every day and and be joyous about it, put it on your altar or put it out in the new moon light. You know, there's a beautiful new moon ritual and affirm it again. You know, I'm so happy and so grateful that last night I stood as Goddess Michelle in front of a stadium of women who felt called and knew that this was exactly where they are supposed to be. I'm so happy and so grateful that my perfect love is attracted to me every way, every way and every day, you know? And so you would affirm that and shake it up, and you could do that as a 28-day ritual.
[Music]
Michelle Tea: I am so grateful to Abiola Abrams for this spell and beyond touched that she used me as an example. Thank you for the spell and thank you for casting it upon me, Abiola! I want to mention that Abiola is all about furthering the wisdom and beauty of African goddesses for all people, and in her work notes which practices are closed to people who are not of African descent, so really, everyone should check out her art and her magic.
We hope you enjoyed this episode of Your Magic, and are left feeling inspired to be your own wild self, conjure success on your own terms, and reach out to the goddexx if you want a little help with that.
Thanks for tuning into Your Magic. Make sure you follow us on Twitter and Instagram @thisisyourmagic. You can subscribe to us right here on Spotify — do what you need to do to never miss an episode. And you can support us — plus get access to a whole bunch of bonus content — at patreon.com/thisisyourmagic. And 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 Raven Yamamoto. Our executive producers are Ben Cooley, myself, and Molly Elizalde. Our original theme music is by John Kimbrough.
Thanks for listening!