In this episode exploring The Devil card, I talk with Khadi (Khadijat) Oluwatoyin, founder and director of Sober Black Girls Club, an organization that offers support and community for Black women, femmes, and nonbinary folks who are practicing or exploring sobriety.

Both Khadi and I share lived experience with alcohol addiction, a dynamic perfectly encapsulated in The Devil card. We talk about our struggles with alcohol, when and how we got sober, 12-step programs (their gifts and limitations), and what becomes possible when we reclaim our power from substances that may be draining our life force, health, creativity, and Spirit.

But The Devil can also represent a number of other dynamics we experience as humans in this world, and Khadi and I get into those too: overachieving and seeking external validation, overconsumption, internal and external judgement, white supremacy and anti-blackness, instant gratification, denial, illusion and half-truths, choosing "the image" and ego over the real deal, taboos, control and domination, breaking cycles, bringing secrets out into the open, and LIBERATION!

Khadi also shares some important links between America's history with alcohol and racial oppression.

No moralizing or preaching here when it comes to alcohol and drug use (HOW COULD WE JUDGE?!), but this is a beautiful episode for anyone considering sobriety, practicing sobriety, or struggling with sobriety, and a relevant conversation for thinking about where our power lies (with us or elsewhere?) and how we can reclaim it.

Check out (and support!!!) Sober Black Girls Club on Instagram and their website. Check out Khadi's new film 988: A Coming of Self Film. Check out the book Sisters of the Yam: Black Women and Self-Recovery by bell hooks.

This episode was beautifully edited by Chantal deFelice, and the logo for this podcast was created by Ami Plasse.

This podcast is a production of Typewriter Tarot. Learn more & join us:

• Join the newsletter and receive the first 3 journaling prompts from Tarot for Creative Spirits (the workbook).
• Subscribe to Typewriter Tarot's Substack.
• Join the Creative Magic Collective.
• Work one-on-one with Cecily (book a free curiosity call).
• Book a Tarot reading.
• Shop our bookshop.

Recorded on an auspicious Martin Luther King Day that coincides with the inauguration of a new and former extremist US president... in the wake of the LA wildfires and the acceleration of climate collapse writ large, we turn to the novels of Octavia E. Butler, the groundbreaking Black feminist sci-fi writer whose work is rooted in the aspirations, truth-telling, and hopes of Afrofuturism.

In a wide-ranging conversation with two of my favorite Afrofuturists — writer Evan Narcisse and liberatory coach Ebony Isis Booth — we explore The Parable of the Sower and The Parable of the Talents, two linked novels published in the 1990s that imagine the world of our present moment (2024 and beyond).

In recent years, Parable of the Sower, in particular, has been bandied about on social media and elsewhere as a "prophetic" text — this novel foretold the use of the phrase "Make America Great Again" and described many of the changes that have come to define this first quarter of the 21st Century. But these references often merely scratch the surface, and we wanted to go deeper, looking into the "prophetic" quality of Butler's Parables and what they can teach us about how to survive the future that is here now, and arriving every day.

Whether you've read the novels, you're curious about them, or you've caught wind of the hype and want to know more, this conversation will illuminate and situate these literary works in our current times, exploring themes of societal collapse, slavery, liberation, technology, community building, self-knowledge, imagination, and space travel.

May this conversation nourish and inspire you as we move into yet another wild and challenging era of change. (Because, as Butler and her main character Lauren Oya Olamina have taught us, God IS change.)

Find Ebony's work on her website, her Substack, and her podcast Ask Me How I Know. Find Evan on Bluesky and Substack.

This podcast is a production of Typewriter Tarot. Learn more & join us:

• Join the newsletter and receive the first 3 journaling prompts from Tarot for Creative Spirits (the workbook).
• Subscribe to Typewriter Tarot's Substack.
• Join the Creative Magic Collective.
• Work one-on-one with Cecily (book a free curiosity call).
• Book a Tarot reading.
• Shop our bookshop.

It's the year of The Hermit (because 2 + 0 + 2 + 5 = 9, The Hermit's number). And it's sure to be a wild year all around — politically, environmentally, technologically. So, what wisdom does The Hermit have to offer us as we head into the unknown?

In this episode, I share three key themes from the Hermit workshop I hosted last week in the Creative Magic Collective. Presented as Hermit principles or philosophies, I invite you to think about how these might apply to your life in the coming year, and what might support you along the way.

This podcast is a production of Typewriter Tarot. Learn more & join us:

• Join the newsletter and receive the first 3 journaling prompts from Tarot for Creative Spirits (the workbook).
• Subscribe to Typewriter Tarot's Substack.
• Join the Creative Magic Collective.
• Work one-on-one with Cecily (book a free curiosity call).
• Book a Tarot reading.
• Shop our bookshop.