February 27, 2025 Fall 2024
What are our repositories of ancestral songs? How do we respond to the carceral extractive gaze wielded daily against our bodies, spirits and communities? Throughout the course Repatterning and Practice: Incantations for the Apocalypse, we led students through sonic, meditative workshops and worldbuilding with amulets, and charms with Bandlab, an online platform for music development, Blender, an open-source 3D application, and New Art City, an online digital exhibition platform. Over these weeks, we engaged in many conversations and gleaned an incredible connection between digitality and spirituality. Students developed confidence with playfully using Blender and confidence in re-connecting and building their intuition as it relates to spirituality. To conclude our course we held a hybrid session at Public Assistants, where participants shared 3D animations of amulets, charms and sonic reverberations of incantations.
Stills from Repatterning and Practice: Incantations for the Apocalypse’s last session at Public Assistants where the animations students made were screened.From this final session, student Leila Shaban shared:
“In this time of polycrisis, when the apocalypse comes for us, remember to turn towards the ancient survival tools Amina & Hiba have guided us through: water sensing, deep listening, meditation, communal dreaming, imagination, soundscapes, somatic exercises, body mapping, humming, ritual, prayer, incantation, play, amulet, and talisman making. While running toward the future we so desperately desire, do not leave your body and your creativity behind, for this is how we’ve always survived.”
Currently, Leila is fundraising to support her family members who have been directly impacted and displaced by the ongoing genocide in Gaza, if you are reading this and have the capacity to donate and share this fundraiser, please do.
Stills from Repatterning and Practice: Incantations for the Apocalypse’s last session at Public Assistants where the animations students made were screened.8 card Tarot Spread: Incantations for the Apocalypse
One of the many tools that Amina engages daily as a part of a practice of self-reflection is working with tarot cards as a mode of divinatory inquiry.
Find the tarot spread designed around the themes of spiritual survival below. This spread incorporates reflection on ancestral wisdom, cultivating resilience amidst oppressive forces, and building tools for a thriving present. Each position is paired with a guiding question. We offer up this spread as something that can be engaged using tarot or other divinatory tools, this spread can also function on its own as a series of points of reflection to be used as prompts for freewriting:
Body Aura, GIF video excerpt by Jiatong YaoThe Repository: (1 card)
What ancestral songs or survival tools do I hold within me?
This card represents the inner resources, memories, and wisdom passed down that you may not even realize you carry. It highlights what can guide you during tumultuous times.
The Gaze: (2 cards)
How might I respond to the carceral and extractive forces around me?
This first card reflects how external systems or oppressive structures impact you and your community, and this second card describes how you can creatively resist or subvert these forces.
The Amulet: (1 card)
What spiritual or creative tools can I craft to protect and sustain myself?
This card offers insight into the talismans, rituals, or practices you can create or lean into for personal and collective survival.
The Connection: (2 cards)
How can I strengthen the bond between my digital and spiritual self?
These 2 cards explore the bridge between material and immaterial worlds within your life, inviting reflection on how digital tools and spiritual practices can be integrated in your life.
The Reverberation: (1 card)
What ripple effects might my actions and creations have on my community in the present?
This card shows the impact of your choices, creativity, and spiritual work on others and the larger collective, emphasizing the importance of shared survival.
The Survival Map: (1 card)
What steps can I take next to navigate this time of polycrisis?
This card provides guidance for immediate actions or mindsets to adopt as you move through uncertain or challenging times.
In line with tools of enacting daily practice and ritual, Amina and Hiba will continue exploring this theme as part of a bibliomancy zine made collaboratively with SFPC course Scripting is Scrying (taught by Aarati Akkapedi and Erica Kermani), which will be released in the new year in coordination with a New Art City associated space. The use of bibliomancy harkens to the notion that a book of pages can be turned to form of divination as part of guidance. In a time of great transformation and change, in leading this course, Amina and Hiba show us the power of creative practice grounded in ritual.