the Three of Witches, the first in a series of 40 drawings that Natasha describes as “an exploration of the facets of the divine feminine and stages of life,” as well as “all these different fragments of my psyche and personality”. Each drawing forms an oracle card in a new deck titled Motherwitch, which she’s since spent three years producing and includes a guidebook for exploring the meanings and interpretations behind the imagery, accompanied by a collection of other visual and sonic artworks.
Natasha hopes people will read and use the deck – in a way that is open to whatever “hidden realms or mysteries of their own imaginations” might present themselves. “To me, that’s intrinsic in the creative process… opening up the channels to the collective unconscious, being receptive to muses or inspiration. Being quiet, listening, being inquisitive.” She suggests people could use the deck as a way of getting to know themselves better, to work through an issue, or even to work through a project that’s stuck. Readers can explore what messages and resonances they individually find in the deck, using the guidebook for clarity.
on Natasha Khan
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the fake priest... who is actually a queer man in disguise... forgiving the sins of the real priest... who just confessed he wasn’t a true believer after all.. after he literally killed people for the god he doesn’t believe in... while both are speaking two different languages and neither understands what the other is saying... I’m going to combust...
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Toad Words
Frogs fall out of my mouth when I talk. Toads, too.
It used to be a problem.
There was an incident when I was young and cross and fed up parental expectations. My sister, who is the Good One, has gold fall from her lips, and since I could not be her, I had to go a different way.
So I got frogs. It happens.
“You’ll grow into it,” the fairy godmother said. “Some curses have cloth-of-gold linings.” She considered this, and her finger drifted to her lower lip, the way it did when she was forgetting things. “Mind you, some curses just grind you down and leave you broken. Some blessings do that too, though. Hmm. What was I saying?”
I spent a lot of time not talking. I got a slate and wrote things down. It was hard at first, but I hated to drop the frogs in the middle of the road. They got hit by cars, or dried out, miles away from their damp little homes.
Toads were easier. Toads are tough. After awhile, I learned to feel when a word was a toad and not a frog. I could roll the word around on my tongue and get the flavor before I spoke it. Toad words were drier. Desiccated is a toad word. So is crisp and crisis and obligation. So are elegant and matchstick.
Frog words were a bit more varied. Murky. Purple. Swinging. Jazz.
I practiced in the field behind the house, speaking words over and over, sending small creatures hopping into the evening. I learned to speak some words as either toads or frogs. It’s all in the delivery.
Love is a frog word, if spoken earnestly, and a toad word if spoken sarcastically. Frogs are not good at sarcasm.
Toads are masters of it.
I learned one day that the amphibians are going extinct all over the world, that some of them are vanishing. You go to ponds that should be full of frogs and find them silent. There are a hundred things responsible—fungus and pesticides and acid rain.
When I heard this, I cried “What!?” so loudly that an adult African bullfrog fell from my lips and I had to catch it. It weighed as much as a small cat. I took it to the pet store and spun them a lie in writing about my cousin going off to college and leaving the frog behind.
I brooded about frogs for weeks after that, and then eventually, I decided to do something about it.
I cannot fix the things that kill them. It would take an army of fairy godmothers, and mine retired long ago. Now she goes on long cruises and spreads her wings out across the deck chairs.
But I can make more.
I had to get a field guide at first. It was a long process. Say a word and catch it, check the field marks. Most words turn to bronze frogs if I am not paying attention.
Poison arrow frogs make my lips go numb. I can only do a few of those a day. I go through a lot of chapstick.
It is a holding action I am fighting, nothing more. I go to vernal pools and whisper sonnets that turn into wood frogs. I say the words squeak and squill and spring peepers skitter away into the trees. They begin singing almost the moment they emerge.
I read long legal documents to a growing audience of Fowler’s toads, who blink their goggling eyes up at me. (I wish I could do salamanders. I would read Clive Barker novels aloud and seed the streams with efts and hellbenders. I would fly to Mexico and read love poems in another language to restore the axolotl. Alas, it’s frogs and toads and nothing more. We make do.)
The woods behind my house are full of singing. The neighbors either learn to love it or move away.
My sister—the one who speaks gold and diamonds—funds my travels. She speaks less than I do, but for me and my amphibian friends, she will vomit rubies and sapphires. I am grateful.
I am practicing reading modernist revolutionary poetry aloud. My accent is atrocious. Still, a day will come when the Panamanian golden frog will tumble from my lips, and I will catch it and hold it, and whatever word I spoke, I’ll say again and again, until I stand at the center of a sea of yellow skins, and make from my curse at last a cloth of gold.
Terri Windling posted recently about the old fairy tale of frogs falling from a girl’s lips, and I started thinking about what I’d do if that happened to me, and…well…
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I have an end-of-life patient to whom I spoke today. She burst out laughing and said, "It was all such fun. I just had so much fun." I wish this for everyone. I wish that we each would meet death laughing, with little regret and even less fear.
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love hides in questions, you cannot ask a thing without giving yourself away. how was your day? (i hope it was good) when can i see you again? (i pray it's soon) do you feel safe with me? (i feel safe with you) what is your favorite color? (i wish to enrobe you in all that makes you smile)
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The Poppy War series is absolutely NOT a romance series but 'She’s the only divine thing he’s ever believed in. The only creature in this vast, cruel land who could kill him. And sometimes, in his loveliest dreams, he imagines she does.'
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What she says: im fine
What she means: the average age of conception over the past 250k years is apparently 26.9. Let's round it down to 25. Think of your birth mother. Hold her hand. Imagine her holding hands with her mother. Within 4 people, you're back in time 100 years, and it's an intimate family dinner. Just after WWI. Add another 16 people, a small party of 20, and you're in the 1500s. Double it, twice, and you're at 80 people. Your family would fill a restaurant, and you're at the height of the Roman empire. At 100 people, Confucius is alive but Socrates has not yet been born. 100 people. That's a medium sized wedding. A small lecture theatre or concert. 200 people, probably the biggest party i could ever hope to host, takes you back 5000 years. The guests at your soirée of parents would be contemporaries of the Egyptian and Indus Valley civilisations, although you'd probably be too busy fixing drinks and nibbles to talk to all of them. Just imagine it. 200 of you. That's all it takes to get back 5,000 years. And we could go further. 1000 people, a decent sized concert, a large high school, and we're at the end of the last ice age. Your ancestors are comparing their pink floyd vinyl with music played on instruments carved from wood or bones of long vanished species. Wander through the crowd. See your own features and phrases and gestures refract out like a kaleidoscope. What would they make of you? What do you make of them? Why does it feel so unfair that even that first 100 years --that small family dinner of four--is out of your grasp? Maybe it's because questions of spatial distance have become negligible to us now. why, oh why, does time hold out against us so stubbornly
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