Long Body Prayers: An Animist Oracle
Created by Shante' Sojourn Zenith with oracular guidance from land, deep time ancestors, and animal body
This oracle deck emerged through channeled ancestral and ecological encounters as part of my Embodiment Studies graduate thesis, Make Your Body the Prayer. The process began in relationship to a Sit Spot at a local marsh, where I would spend hours communing with nature beings, deep time ancestors, and my animal body through song, movement, and trance. The following winter, the writing from these encounters distilled itself into 24 poems, the spirits of which I transmuted into a painting. When the painting was finished, I cut it into 24 squares and wrote one of the poems on the back of each card, creating an oracle in which each card was a fractal of the wider ecosystem.
Reading aloud a sentence, I hold onto the felt sense of it as I pour paint across the thick paper, moving the viscous liquid with my brush in sensuous flicks. You get to be loved here, in this enoughness, this listening…The painting is like a dance. Each sentence a difference angle, swirling in pinks and grays…meet me where I am at home, give me space to unfold… as I speak each poem I turn, moving my body around the table where the canvas rests, mixing green with amber, speak to me with all that crawls haltingly out of familiar ways…Sometimes I sing, a low humming as my brush swishes oranges in circular motions, the lingering resonance of a lullaby.
When I am finished, I stand back in the stillness of my studio space, taking in the painting. Afternoon sun streams in the windows and I hear the subtle murmuring of the maple leaves outside. Continually turning the canvas as I read each of the poems, I have hardly been noticing what I am creating. Now, looking down at the finished painting, a landscape unfolds in myriad textures before me, emeralds and lavenders furling open a seedpod, dazzling azure water pouring down from the green-gold marsh reeds, while below bright russet sparks travel their own journey within black soil. My channeled poetry has become an ecosystem. It is at this moment that the phrase Long Body Prayers arrives as the name for the oracle deck I am in the process of creating.
PRACTICING WITH YOUR ORACLE DECK
Pocket-sized for ease of carrying, the oracle cards can be used for divination and as creative prompts for your own artistic process. You can also use the cards in concert with my mini-course Trust the Ground, which includes short guided somatic practices associated with each oracle card for entering into deeper connection with body, land, and deep time ancestors.
