S O C I A L M E D I A C O M M E N T A R Y
"Oshun. Bey. I got my life."
• "Everyone can go home now because Beyoncé just slayed the 2017 Grammys." • "Divine Beyoncé performing while expecting twins, beautiful tribute to women/mothers!" • "WTF? Although I didn't expect anything less from the high priestess of the illuminati!" • "Beyoncé is a woman in touch with her African ancestry. I love how she channeled the orishas Osun and Ibeji in her performance. There is nothing satanic, demonic or illuminati about this." • "As if she couldn't be more annoying . . . making profit out of her pregnancy. Next a video with her umbilical cord?" • "So..am I the only Lucumi/Ifa practitioner that is not impressed by Beyoncé's recent Oshun representations? I feel that her displays support the simplification of Oshun and disregard her many beautiful and complex layers." • 
E M O T I O N
We are emotional beings. Even with being presented rock-solid facts, clear-cut logic, our emotions will often be the final word on a choice to be made. So what touches our emotions? Images, Music, Words, Scents, Touch, Taste. Experiences through our senses activate our emotions. I spoke about messages and programming being slipped in through our trance state in SUPERWOMEN & GODDESSES: Workin' Your Power & Magic Book One. That's why it's important that we always stand guard of our minds and the things we consume. In 2002, when I began production of the yet-released documentary film "Searchin' For M'Sistahz" there was no mantra or hashtag of #blackgirlmagic. When I set pen to paper to write SUPERWOMEN & GODDESSES: Workin' Your Power & Magic Book One in 2005 beginning with the piece "Can A Sista Get At Least 50 Cent?" the talk about goddess or superwoman anything was so underground that I couldn't even find the word in my dictionary at the time. Fifteen years later, #magic, #goddess, #superwomen and all things #feminine, #powerful and #magical are bristling with a resurrected effervescence. It's like the Spirit of our grandmothers have returned to get this thing right for us. Enter Beyoncé's Lemonade album. 
I don't own a TV, so I missed the Grammy's last night but thank goodness to Mr. Zuckerberg and friends, with social media we won't skip a beat. So within moments of opening up my Facebook feed I see a picture of Tina Beyincé-Lawson, Beyoncé and Blue Ivy that read: "Oshun. Bey. I got my life."
Ok. So I typed in the Facebook search box: Beyonce Grammys 2017 and found a nine-minute video entitled "Snatched." [VIDEO BELOW] and watched it. Deep breath. As a woman of color, strongly aligned with my West African and Indigenous American heritage folded into a consciousness that I am/you are/we are embodiments of divinity, the pre-show images of the trio: daughter, mother and grandmother then the performance left me . . . Inspired. Proud. Moved. Relieved.
Inspired.
In fact, inspired and tingling. With the name of the most ancient goddess in recorded history [AUSET] and a Venus in Leo, love, beauty and magic are full-time preoccupations for me and Beyoncé's Grammy performance was dripping with divine beauty and symbolism that I my consciousness effortlessly decoded. Looking like an Ethiopian painting, every woman in this on-stage drama wore a halo indicating illuminated consciousness (Heru = hero). The imagery was ÜBER-feminine and deliciously maternal as Bey moved her pregnant with twins body in a tribe of diaphanous sistren. What a breath of fresh air. Behind closed doors I've mentioned to my family members (because I don't believe in disparaging another's creative work. When you create, you "under"stand what it takes to materialize your visions so there's a level of respect I don't violate.) an element I found lacking in the Black Girl's Rock awards from year-to-year. Although we look soooo beautiful and put together, the celebration is mainly of women achieving in their masculine energy outside of the home with very little emphasis on the maternal aspect (nurturer/protector and not completely in the feminine domain but a balance of the both like the hemispheres of our brain working together) of who we are. The very essence of femininity expresses itself inside, within, the hidden. This was something I really respected and appreciate Martha Stewart for and that was bringing a spotlight and encouraging the art of creating home. If you are a female you embody three hundred and sixty degrees of femininity (#superwomenandgoddesses) so why be limited? We are at a time in history where we're finding our footing within a shifting patriarchal to matriarchal reality in America. Growing pains if you will. So finding our balance and footing may take awhile but we WILL get there. It's the Age of Aquarius after all. Sometimes it takes a moment to balance and find a happy medium while at the same time there should be no question about the CIVIL RIGHT to choose our experiences and destiny in this life while being compensated equally. Proud. First aware of Beyoncé through Destiny's Child in '98, it's been interesting to witness Beyoncé's very human-in-front-of-the-world growth and evolution as an artist, woman, daughter and mother. Those close to me know that although I was jammin' to Destiny's Child like everyone else ("Bills, Bills, Bills", "Bugaboo," "Say My Name"). I began to wince a bit at Destiny's Child's proclamation of being "independent women" with a "F you, I don't need you because I got my own." message because by this time (2001) my commitment to the partnership, alliance and union of men and women was taking a deep root within. In the meantime, I saw a rise in the conversation of "black" women not able to find mates of their same culture, while many men were opting to couple with women outside of their own culture (which is fine but then leaves a bit of a void for the women who desire men of their same culture). Union of man and woman as interdependent and complementary was a concept I was cultivating in myself in my own process of chipping away at the adverse American European/Christian mindset I was raised in for an exploration of who I was indigenously. I had an Ifa priest who taught me about the orishas and a Sioux shaman that provided an authentic Native American sweat lodge experience complete with making tobacco ties. War and division of the sexes is not part of most of our pre-colonial heritage. Our most ancient African i.e. pre-colonized mindset was always matriarchal (the Jews/Hyksos/Shepherd Kings adopted this part of ancient African culture in their occupation of Egypt), which to be clear was not the opposite of patriarchy but the idea that where there is a god there is also a goddess. Matriarchy is the recognition of balance, yin and yang, male and female, masculine and feminine, husband and wife, heaven and earth, etc. Patriarchy and matriarchy were never in competition. I go more into this in the book. So at that time I didn't feel preaching about independence (a European concept of "rugged individualism" or "me") was the answer but interdependence (which is about "we" which is distinctly pre-colonial African worldview, as well as many cultures who live close to the earth and in sync with Nature.) We never know what's happening in someone's household but to hear Beyoncé's message of letting the circle be unbroken between, daughters and mothers, grandmothers and grand-daughters, sisters, husband and wife is refreshing and inspiring. Moved. In 2002, I declared that BET was one of the banes of my existence. As the law of attraction would have it, I later became friends with the head of programming and his wife at the time. I hated BET's misogynistic music videos back in the 90s because I felt it was ruining our already delicate relationship with our men as well as how "black" women we're viewed globally. My passion for the elevation of the divine black feminine was deepened after working alongside Madonna's makeup artist on a string of 50 Cent music videos. I was inspired to DO something because I personally didn't feel represented in this media, nor any of the magical women I knew. My daughters were watching this culture unfold so I set out to change the perception of "black women" in America so began production of "Searchin' For M'Sistahz" a documentary highlighting the beauty, power and magic of "black" women. Pretty much, my own PR campaign for us, to save our families. I realized this weekend that the images, music and media that I dreamt of creating and viewing for myself and daughters I was now watching, I now see in social media, in TV commercials, in films, yes there's still a great deal of nonsense and insanity offered on the buffet, but all I ever desired was to have a choice. Ghandi has been quoted often to "Be The Change You Wish To See In The World." I have begun to see that writing, publishing and creating a life's work around superwomen, goddesses, who work power, magic, holistic beauty has manifested in the culture that I live, participate and can now consume. I feel fed and represented somewhere out there. Relieved. My chant has been that I'd like to see women: all of us, of all hues, cultures, etc. get back in touch with the most powerful aspect of ourselves and that is the mysterious, internal, still, magnetic aspect of the multi-faceted spectrum of what it is to be female. If Queen Bey, the biggest entertainer in the world at this time is at the 2017 Grammy's inspiring and moving people with images of family, lineage, motherhood, sisterhood, femininity, love, beauty and magic I don't care of she's illuminati (LOL.), or if it's all a marketing gimmick or anything else. The mission is accomplished. The images have been embedded, the culture, the girls, the boys have been elevated and the possibility of the balance of masculine/feminine within/without manifest in our families is alive. I saw the film "Daughters of the Dust" decades ago and it changed my life. Media IS POWERFUL. So similar to what I feel about President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama, if they did NOTHING in eight years politically: quite simply the image of them as an elegant, intelligent, bonded family is an image that taps into our emotion/aspiration that is more powerful than any speech will ever have. Although I don't see myself as joining your beehive anytime soon because I have my own, thank you Mrs. Beyonce Knowles Carter for properly representing the three hundred and sixty degrees of what it is to be female for all the superwomen and goddesses before, here and after who work power and whirl magic. As Marimba Ani has written: Let the circle be unbroken. Respect from your Virgo si"star": Daughter of Obatala and Priestess of Auset. Thanks for reading. ♡ ☆ ♀ Akua Day 17 of 1/12 Moons Waxing Gibbous in Virgo 
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