Reclamation and The Feminine Masquerade
Words are fascinating. They are both great teachers and tools to me. I spend a lot of time with them - bending them, shredding them, stitching them back together again and then chasing them to their burial grounds. Interrogating what they were before and how they might serve us now.
Often they call to me like clues on a map. Letting me know where I have unfinished business in this journey called Life.
For some time, I have felt a persistent and low-key curiosity towards the Wellcome Collection. A sort of warm, vague buzz of attraction. A claircognizance that this unknown place has meant something to me whether they or I have a conscious awareness of our connection or not - we are - connected. It can feel bamboozling to receive such passionate “feelings” without a clear foundation but I am used to my intuition asking above and beyond from me. She often requests and then demands that I hold on to a grounding of Truth that is founded in nothing but a glimmer of Faith. That glimmer says - YO AMARA - take the risk. Make the leap. Did you forget that you are meant to be here? Your very instinct has value.
You belong beloved.
It’s hard because such transcendent certainty is bound to (understandably) come up against opposition. I had never even stepped foot into the Wellcome Collection when I decided I wanted to collaborate with them. Then at some point in 2020, a region deep deep deep within the map of me rumbled a determined “HALT HERE” in relation to that institution and Mr. Henry Wellcome. When I listened to the grumbles - they changed the course of my life.
And where does this grumbly rumbly noise come from?
The dark. The shadows. The unknown.
“I looked in the Oxford Thesaurus of English, that great arbiter of language, for the phrase in the dark, and found the following definitions: unaware, uninformed, oblivious, ignorant, unenlightened, unacquainted. So we can see that this shunning of darkness is encoded at the level of language. Not one of these phrases suggest that it might be anything other than an unfruitful, unprofitable, unworthwhile place in which to dwell. And how easy is it for us to admit to being in the dark, to admit that we don’t know something?” - Anna Luke - Toward a Radical Uncertainty, Into the Darkness: The Psychedelic Mysteries of the Feminine.
As I’ve discovered a new appreciation for words - for their sacred power to create and destroy - I’ve understood to a deeper level, my attachment to books. Books are the great material temples that house those sweet distilled nectars I have come to mystically crave.
What delicious metaphysical drink be this?! Affirmation.
Affirmation is why I read and write. Affirmation is why I am here. I live to affirm life.
The above passage speaks to why it feels so terrifying to finish this blog. To share the insights I’ve found while exploring the beyond not only feels exposing but dangerous. It helps to see that another soul has noticed the British proclivity to feminise and then demonise the unknown.
I have spent the last couple of years unexpectedly thrust into a soul initiation as a feminine mystic. This has involved receiving celestial and shadow keys to the mysteries of the beyond. By “the beyond”, I mean the esoteric, queer, unknown, slow and obscure - the realms that live beyond time and space - the numinous - the other.
From the smallest energy or emotional exchange, to full on satanic rituals happening in my ends of North West London during 2021 (Rest in Peace our ancestral sisters Bibaa Henry and Nicole Smallman), it seems to me there is a palpable struggle to hold space for that which we cannot categorise. We all live entangled in the inconceivable and yet it feels unbearable to bear witness to honest expression about that.
So where do these displaced, uncategorizable relics to our collective story go?
Our museums, our libraries, our galleries - monuments and safehouses for the posterity of cultural artefacts.
Yet these buildings struggle to hold the wonder they did in my childhood. They now feel either hidden in “preservation” or disappearing to me. Our cultural conventions seem bound to the mantra - Keep Calm and Carry On - a traditional, rigid and most familiar British slogan used to sedate during wartime.
Keep Calm
and
Carry On
I have noticed that this compulsive pacifiying reaction to emergent behaviour has become a deeply embedded imperial propaganda. This is not necessarily a bad thing. I like feeling calm. Sometimes I like carrying on. But also sometimes… not. Maybe we could adapt the formula to -
Sometimes Stop
and
Remember Rest
Perhaps not as catchy or productivity-inducing but can we get real? It is ENOUGH. Enough is actually enough. The theme of the year for every feminine energy (including myself) I encounter seems to be:
“I’m sick and tired of being sick and TIRED.”
- Fannie Lou Hamer
And as my spirit kindred Dr.Thema says it:
“It’s exhausting being fake”
We see burn out written on the head of CEO and caregiver alike. So here I have come to slow down. The last New Moon was in Pisces - the sign of the Mystic. The heart warriors. The Grace producers.
I ask myself - what is my heart willing to fight for?
I am willing to fight for my right to feel safe to live my whole, authentic truth. And for my siblings to do the same. That means you bro.
Because these two years have been both humbling and humiliating - it has involved a lot of Enlightenment and far more Enshadowment. A huge catalyst for my cocooning phase was when I became a survivor of police violence on 31st August 2019. That event changed me wholly and deeply. I still feel the handcuffs bruising my wrists.
So here we enter 2022, the year we illuminate the enshadowed feminine and break our collective shackles. Yes collective - because our betrayal or repulsion of the feminine is devouring us all - men, child and plant alike. I finally feel that I am in an air-scape that allows me to reflect on and express this process of healing transformation. If you are also on a wild journey of homecoming to your soul, spirit, heart and body then - my stuff may resonate with you. No worries, if it isn’t a good fit. It’s not by force.If it don’t fit - QUIT!
I’ve come to learn that things are simple and complex. I love the simple. I am complex.
Yay for Life - the greatest masquerade!
Right so let’s keep things good and accessible and start with the surface - with a definition:
masquerade
/ˌmɑːskəˈreɪd,ˌmaskəˈreɪd/
noun
a false show or pretence.
"I doubt he could have kept up the masquerade for long"
Similar:
pretence, deception, pose, act, front, facade, disguise, dissimulation, cover-up, bluff, subterfuge, play-acting, make-believe, put-on
Now a little deeper - as I’m an etymology empress - let’s go down to the roots:
masquerade
1530s, "a cover for the face (with openings for the eyes and mouth), a false face,"
mid 16th century: from French masque "covering to hide or guard the face",
from Italian maschera, mascara, probably from medieval Latin masca ‘witch, spectre, mask, nightmare’
perhaps influenced from Arabic masḵharah "buffoon, mockery," from sakhira "be mocked, ridiculed."
it may be a Provençal word originally: compare Occitan mascara "to blacken, darken," derived from mask- "black," which could be from a pre-Indo-European language, and Old Occitan masco "witch," surviving in dialects;
in Beziers it means "dark cloud before the rain comes."
figurative meaning - "anything used or practiced for disguise or concealment" is by 1570s
So I can see that on a linguistics and root level - the word masquerade is linked to hiding, ridicule, blackness, darkness, witches, guarding,(w)holes, outlines (mascara i.e - to highlight your eyes) and omens. Interesting.
And also the idea of pretending. Also interesting.
Why?
Tituba - the first woman to be accused of being a witch in the Salem witch trials was an indigneous black or brown woman.
Who was she accused by?
Elizabeth Parris and Abigail Williams - two white girls with whom she had shared her culture, medicine and heart.
WITCH
Few of us are aware of the very real, lived and bloody cultural shadow around this label.This is a brutal part of our shared history and a blight on our relationship with the extraordinary feminine. In 1692, there were actual LAWFUL WITCH TRIALS on human lives in the United States of America - Salem, Massachusetts to be exact. Can you deep it? This happened worldwide - Europe, Africa, Asia. Between the 15th and 18th centuries, thousands of feminine energies - women upon women upon women were drowned, beaten, shackled and burned alive on this same earth that we live on and share today. This is not a thing of fiction. I know this not solely because of Google but because my chest is tightening as I write. My breath quickens and the drum in my ribcage reverberates - I feel the twang of hypocrisy swell and inflame my intercostal injuries. Like a lightning bolt, I suddenly remember a hidden truth I’d prefer not to. I directed Arthur Miller’s The Crucible in 2010 while at Durham University. Yet, despite having danced with the deep darkness of this well-known theatre play, I have repressed the memory of its real root origins in our flesh and bones past. I feel embarrassed. Is this why I used to cringe, stutter and vehemently deny the label “witch” having anything to do with me?
Bettman/Getty Images
For someone prone to such radical ego decimation, this one has flown under the radar for some time. I threw it into the void. Avoided what I didn’t want to recount. Na wowwww - this really is the year of the great unmasking.
mama said no more lies!
When did I learn to not only forget but revile the magic keepers from which I hail?
They never got a chance to feel safe with their extrasensory gifts. Will i?
I come from a lineage of healers, herbalists, documentarians, visionaries and light-bearers. My dad is Nze - a living ancestor. He doesn’t say a lot but when he does I listen and this relationship is reciprocal - I am grateful for this simplicity. Recently, he reminded me:
“Nne (mother), the brain has the function to forget”
Mmm. That is part of the meaning of my middle name. Amarachi - the Grace of the Soul. We can’t possibly hold all of this tangled matter in our noggin at once.
So thank you, again, Amarachi, little me. For the gift of forgetting.
One of my favourite films, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind introduced me to this quote from Eloisa to Abelard by Alexander Pope:
How happy is the blameless vestal’s lot!
The world forgetting, by the world forgot.
Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind!
Each prayer accepted, each wish resign’d
and for some years in the noughties I’d repeat it in my head a lot. Sometimes while I sat alone in the grey-sky courtyard of psychiatric wards, scared and spinning. Sometimes in a journal. Sometimes, in my dreams.
This is a wandering blog - thank you neurodivergent brain. I am learning to love you.
I have a lot to say about Mama Vesta - the feminine flamekeeper archetype - for another blog and another day.
So, I’m feeling heartache and learning to forgive myself for forgetting the burned witch inside me. The truth of the ash from which we have risen. I am releasing blame for my will to forget the unforgivable wounds of our past. I am releasing the shame, suffering and burden of #blackgirlmagic
I wonder if the fact I was reading Natural Sciences at Durham impacted my ability to let in any conscious authentic connection to mysticism back then. Maybe it felt contradictory and at a time that contradiction felt bad instead of bountiful. Now I reflect - it seemed to be essential that I grew up with a firm grounding in science, the material, biological and measurable. I resisted that path so badly ahaha but it held on to me tight and now I understand why it happened that way. As dark as those years were (my dark night of the soul) they make me whole. They strengthen my kitestrings. There are cycles and seasons in this realm of existence. I’m learning to embrace that with gratitude.
So back to the here and now - ancestor Tituba of Barbados and beyond - I am sorry for forgetting you. Today, I say your name - #SayHerName
Tituba was enslaved as a teenage girl by Samuel Parris taken from her homeland to the USA. While looking after two girls, they accused her of being a witch and she was beaten into confessing to false testimony. Black women - the OG scapegoat. It saved her life to live a lie. And so, today, I release such bondage to a life of lies. To being forced to speak a truth that is not my own. Today I take off my mask. I decapitate.
I wish I didn’t feel compelled to add an “I’m not about that curse life” disclaimer but… a history of persecution of wise women speaks for itself. There is no use me tip tap typing away about magic without acknowledging our bondage to a diasporic witch wound. So take heed:
I, Ezenwanyi Amarachi Akuwagmbe do not dilly or dally with dark magic or evil spirits.
I give my heart in service of Love, Creator and Creation.
I walk the path of truth with respect and affirmation for Life.
I take a daily vow to cause no undue harm.
I try to hold space for souls on a homecoming journey.
If it does not fit - it is fine to quit.
Akankwumoto, Ise.
What is a feminine mystic?
In Igbo we are called Ezenwanyi. A high priestess, seer, oracle, shamaness, channel, intermediary and healer - an embodiment of the divine mother creator and a bridge between the realms of the Divine.
My lived experience shows me intimately that we are all a reflection of each other and thus the universe. We are interdependent and interconnected.
Things are rarely as they seem and multiple truths exist.
A large part of my spiritual training has involved looking beneath the veil, the hidden sands - aja ana.
It has involved being honest that a veil even exists. That is scary business.
The veil, I would simply describe as this illusion we call the purely physical and mental existence that separates us from our Oneness at the core of things. It is the reality that we see that masks that which is beyond words. In Igbo cosmology, we call this Eke or Uwa - the universal plane of existence. In Hindu philosophy, it is called Maya and is experienced as an illusion, a veiling of the true, unitary Self—the Cosmic Spirit known cross-culturally as “God, Goddess, Source, the Almighty, the Creator, Life, Love” etc.
Ahaha this blog is me coming out mystical! All of this long and winding context is here to show you some of my creative process, how it is inseparable from my faith and why I commit so seriously to following the gentlest hunch...
So my spirit called me to Wellcome Collection where I met some lovely white men. I mention them being seemingly cis-het, white and men because them being so and having open hearts with clear intentions to repair wounds has been a core part of my healing journey. Contrary to the narrative of a lifetime, I had been invited into an institution and handled with care by David and James. It was my friend James that unwittingly introduced me to exactly what I had been seeking -
Her is where I found here.
Ezenwanyi - Igbo-Nigerian head currently held in Medicine Man exhibit at Wellcome Collection in London.
A part of me.
A fellow She.
Trapped.
Female head with an elaborate hairstyle. Deviated identity. Nonamed into a vacuum of fury. A void of disgust. Perpetual castration - manifested abomination against land and spirit - nso ala - Rage. Ugliness and confusion. A catastrophe of injustice behind shiny glass. I remember the day I first met her. I buckled to my knees engulfed in blood and torment. I felt the light in the room slipping away while it dawned on me that she was being held hostage in a room called Medicine Man. The sacred object of my medicine women - unnamed, unused, preserved, observed, measured and controlled. This is our rape incarnate.
And so, I understood my connection to that building. Her. She is the mission. The collective She.
How many of us remain trapped behind glass? Waiting to be set free to our true purpose? What does it truly mean to be welcome?
Big thank you to nwannem nwoke (bro) Derick Ofodirinwa from The Medicine Shell for giving me the idea to explore mask painting in more conscious ways. And also - thank you for for your life.
I would like to thank my Creator for guiding me towards Aisha Josiah - a talented Edinburgh-based writer-producer - who has given her time to support the conceptualisation of the vision. Working alongside Olivia Songer - exciting New York-based director - we have secured funding from Creative Scotland via the Four Nations International Fund to embark on this very project:
RECLAMATION
Hurray for the great unmasking!
Four Nations International Fund - Creative Scotland Press Release
Reclamation is a multi-branch project (just how I like them) that includes:
an archival research process (how was she used before? how did she get where she is now? come on, get real!)
community devising workshops (how can she be experienced today?)
dramaturgical sessions (data collation, discussion, writing and script formation),
live performance (a sharing involving her and a community)
process documentation (timekeepers and archivists also must be remembered)
methodology production (how can other heritage institutions use storytelling frameworks for a process of reparation and reclamation?
Things got real fast eh? Tis l i t e r a l l y the season - I’m simply going with the flow. It seems I’m not the only one:
Message received!
Tis a whole vibe. Taking back what’s yours. Your stuff. The bits you discarded didn’t necessarily discard you. Darling one, what have you left behind? What matters to you? What makes your heart scream? Maybe it’s waiting, frozen in time, for you to come and smash through the masquerade.
Thank you for joining me on this journey. If you’d like to receive updates, walk this path with me, offer suggestions and questions, be involved in the community workshops or more - drop your email below and join my soon-come mailing list.
It’ll be used for healing things and not spam. Even the word spam gives me the ick.
Safe. Thanks again. Follow my organisation Black Mind.
Love Ezenwanyi Amarachi Rachel Akuwamgbe Nwokoro - aka hedgehog honey.
