Flowers for Marsha, Fruits of Freedom
Zel Amanzi and Eli Lawliet on Transcestral Wisdom
To me, devotion (as a verb) refers to consistently showing up from a place of love, to the point of and including ritual and beyond, until the practice is folded into your bones and becomes a part of the fabric of your life. —Eli Lawliet
Welcome to the first installment of the Queerly Devoted interview series! Here, we’ll get to know magical and radical folks working at the intersections of queerness, transness, spirituality, and devotion. We’ll hear inspiring perspectives and learn how real people are living spiritual lives devoted to queerness, transness, community, love, and liberation.
I am so excited to kick off this series with Isazela “Zel” Amanzi (they/he) of Transgressive Medicine and Eli Lawliet (he/him) of The Gender Doula, who generously agreed to answer my questions about working with transcestors. Transcestors are trans ancestors, the dearly departed trans people who came before us, who paved the way for us, who fought with their activism for our rights and respect, or who simply did their best to live and love as their authentic selves in an unfriendly world. Transcestors do not have to be related to us by blood because we are connected through something that can be even thicker: experience. And in this current moment of heightened anti-trans political backlash, violence, and legislative attacks, a transcestral practice can provide a deep well of resilience, wisdom, and support.
Last year, I took Zel and Eli’s one-day class on working with transcestors, which deepened and expanded by existing transcestral practice in beautiful ways. Now, they’ve expanded the class into an immersive 5-week course, which is sure to be a deeply rich and powerful experience for transgender, non-binary, and genderqueer folks who want to begin or deepen a transcestral practice. The 2-hour class changed my practice and touched the way I relate to my non-binary gender, so I can only imagine how transformative the 5-week course will be! The course, Accessing Transcestral Wisdom, starts May 1st.
With no further ado, here’s Zel and Eli on queerness and transness as an orientation to life, devotion as action, and the life-changing practice of working with transcestors.
What does the word “queer” mean to you?
Zel:
Queerness, for me, is a political orientation as much as, if not more than, it is a gender and sexuality orientation. I always guide people to bell hooks' reference to Tim Dean's work on queerness as being at odds with society, especially a domineering society hell bent on systematically & violently imposing conformity to maintain supremacy ideations that fuel mass violence. She names trans people as being leaders in this work.
Queerness as a political orientation guides every aspect of my life, not just my romantic and sexual relationships. It is what encourages me to ask questions that challenge authority, to not simply accept what I've been told about the way things are. I use neuroqueer, a term popularized by Dr. Nick Walker (she/her) as a way of inserting queerness as a political orientation into my neurodivergences.
Eli:
To me, “queer” is such a broad word that it is impossible to describe without, in some way, putting parameters or boundaries around it. To me personally, queerness is wrapped up inextricably with transness. I know that gender studies and queer studies and trans studies all made a concentrated effort to separate sexuality and gender, but for me, they aren’t separate. I do my gender queerly, I do my sexuality transly. And perhaps this is because my queerness is not necessarily about sexuality and my transness is not necessarily about gender, and both are about and not about one another. Ultimately, my queerness and my transness transcend sexuality/gender and are just part of how I do (and relate to) my humanity, life, and the world at large.
Eli: I do my gender queerly, I do my sexuality transly… Ultimately, my queerness and my transness transcend sexuality/gender and are just part of how I do (and relate to) my humanity, life, and the world at large.
I fear this might be a bit confusing! So let me try again.
To me, queerness is a consistent curiosity where the status quo holds very little, if any, weight over one’s actions, ideas, behaviors, presentation, etc. It is an inherent question mark, where the more concrete something seems, the more available it becomes for interpretation and re-interpretation. It also refers to the messy spaces under, behind, within, and beneath things, the unspeakable and the monstrous as misunderstanding. It is also part of the fundamental thrumming of life. Nature is queer/trans. Deities are queer/trans. Music is queer/trans. It is erotic in the sense of sexuality and also in the sensuousness of vitality.
Queer is a framework, a way of doing, seeing, being, and a network of relationships in the great web.
How would you describe your spirituality, and how does queerness show up in it?
Zel:
My spirituality is abolitionist. My spirituality does not allow for patriarchy because it is impossible for this Black, queer, neuroqueer, disabled body to embody any of its principles. Assimilation cannot live within me. I tried to house it unsuccessfully for the first 26 years of my life--and was therefore constantly spiritually depleted! I have a persistent drive for autonomy, which is conventionally attributed to my autism, but I associate it heavily with my queerness and my spirituality. I'm convinced this speaks to why there is a high correlation between queerness/transness and austim/adhd.
I love being different. I find very little value in normativity and sameness; in fact, I think it holds most people back. I see the instinctive compliance demanded by compulsory conformity as a threat to autonomy, authenticity, creativity, innovation, community-building, self-empowerment, radical love--and therefore to spirituality itself! So, a big part being queer to me means problematizing everything as a spiritual practice, which annoys a lot of people 🙂! But, I'm just not interested in validating other peoples' non-consensual domination of me through silence and inaction.
Zel: My queerness is that inner voice whispering, "but why are we doing it that way? Don't move in that direction just because everyone else is. Explore. Experiment. Grow. Lead."
My queerness is that inner voice whispering, "but why are we doing it that way? Don't move in that direction just because everyone else is. Explore. Experiment. Grow. Lead." My queerness is scientific, and it is that scientific instinct that makes me reject so much of the patriarchal and capitalist nonsense I've been told that prevented me from having a relationship with my ancestors for so long. Let's just say, for those of us familiar with Octavia Butler, I'm not particularly interested in the Space Travel aspects of Earth Seed, but I believe firmly that God is Change.
Eli:
I was raised conservative evangelical christian, and none of that whole mess ever spoke to me. I spent many young years as a vague agnostic, then my twenties as an annoying atheist. It wasn’t until my first semester of grad school that I realized that I needed something, and spirituality called me. I knew that I couldn’t root into anything organized in really any way, and when I poked at various alternative spiritual traditions they were either misappropriating culture, too organized/hierarchical, or just gave me the ick and didn’t feel true.
So I asked myself what could I believe in? Queerness and Transness were the answers. So as long as I have been practicing any real spirituality, that spirituality has been rooted into queer/transness. Over the years, my study, research, and personal experiences have slowly woven a tapestry of animistic practice, ancestor/transcestor work, relationships with deities and entities, energetic work, and more.
As for how I would describe it all, at least part of it is organized under the word “transimaginality.” This word was coined by my partner, joon seo lee, when I told him that I believed trans people to be the imaginal cells of humanity. I had just learned about imaginal cells, which are the cells that activate after a caterpillar turns to soup in a chrysalis and tell that soup how to make a butterfly. We’re still parsing out the fullness of transimaginality as a set of values, an orientation, a posture toward the world, a way of moving in community. But the word is one I often turn to when considering my spiritual practice
Above: Charlie’s handwritten notes from the October 2023 Accessing Transcestral Wisdom class. The text reads, “Eli: remembering what the spirit knows that the mind has forgotten. ‘The elements of your physical form resonate through all that ever was or will be.’”
What brought you to transcestor work initially?
Zel:
My Blackness did. There's something about being the descendent of stolen people on stolen lands that means ancestor work has always been around me, even if it is/was cloaked in language that does not resonate with me.
Then, my formal study of yoga (including breathwork & meditation), animist palm healing via Reiki and Hoodoo divination gave me language to center my spiritual practice as ancestral relationship. These helped me understand my spirituality as rooted in my particular bodymind's expression of one iteration of a collective ancestral liberatory purpose that both transcends time and is unique to this lifetime.
Eli:
Because my whole spiritual system is based in transness, it felt like a clear step for me. Especially because my recent ancestors do not typically work with me. My maternal grandmother is present for me in certain ways, but for the most part, the blood ancestors I work with are from centuries back. My trancestors are very present for me, and very loud! They certainly don’t hesitate to come into my practice, and I’m grateful for their presence.
Eli: The word “trans” is very recent, but the idea of being something outside of a male/female dichotomy is as old as life itself.
One thing that helped me, also, was studying about the transcestors that we are aware of. I did a lot of trans history during my Ph.D. and it helped me to get a clearer view of the recent trancestors, as well as the many thousands of years of people who existed outside of our current understanding of gender and sexuality and were similarly positioned in their cultures. The word “trans” is very recent, but the idea of being something outside of a male/female dichotomy is as old as life itself. So there are truly infinite ways to call on and work with transcestors.
How has working with transcestors enriched your spiritual practice or touched your life? Has it changed your relationship to your own gender or queerness?
Zel:
This practice has revolutionized my relationship to my senses. As a multiply neurodivergent and traumatized person, I can't overstate how much that has changed my life. I can be in communication with my body in ways that self-protective dissociation simply did not allow before. That has a natural consequence for gender in a world that insists on equating gender with the body and queerness with physical expression. It has allowed me to be honest with myself about who I really am, to historically situate that, to be thrilled about it, and to genuinely honor it. Working with transcestors has given me the courage to be myself in the face of overwhelming violence against people like me.
Zel: Working with transcestors has given me the courage to be myself in the face of overwhelming violence against people like me.
Eli:
Working with transcestors has changed my life drastically in that it has led me down paths I never would have walked otherwise. The transcestors give me more ideas than I know what to do with! They give me information about how to move in my life and my work, and I’ve learned to listen to them. Working with transcestors has been deeply healing as I have often felt separated from my bloodline as well.
I also think that working with transcestors has made me deeply resilient to the current backlash and to the grief, rage, and horror that we are all experiencing. I derive tremendous strength from them, and from knowing that they have felt similar waves of emotion and that they found solace where they could. This practice has also made my well of love for trans folks grow even deeper, it’s probably infinite at this point!
I could honestly go on forever, but I will end this answer with this - knowing and communing with transcestors has helped me understand transness far better and more deeply. They teach me all the time about all the ways that we get it wrong, even in community! When you’re constrained to a body, transness can get confusing. When you’re constrained to English, describing your gender can feel like a hundred different ways of misrepresenting yourself. In my transcestral relationships, transness has a space to breathe, to extend well past the confines of our bodies and words and expand into the sacred mystery. Transcestors are incredible facilitators of that journey.
What’s one of your favorite ways to work with transcestors?
Zel:
For me, altar work and daily altar offerings are central to my connection practice. Writing is also a critical connection and communication practice for me, as are meditation and card-reading. There came a point in time where my ancestral practice became central to my sense of self, and when that happened, I realized I can make everything an ancestral practice with the right intention.
Eli:
Its simple, but I just enjoy talking to them. It’s a sort of day to day dialogue that feels so intimate and so supportive. They really do help me to remember who I am when I get distracted and side tracked by the struggles of our current moment. It’s lovely.
Above: Zel’s book, Transcendence Affirmed, which contains 40 haiku-inspired poems and 40 sets of corresponding affirmations originally written in response to the question, "Transcestors, what would you have wanted to hear to help you survive?" Buy it here.
One of the things I really valued about your 2023 workshop was the attention you gave to racism and white supremacy, cultural appropriation, and navigating legacies of harm. Can you share a little about why this is so essential to ancestor work?
Zel:
This is essential for maintaining the integrity of the work we do, all of which is rooted in various indigenous wisdoms. I want every person in this space to understand how critical an ancestor practice can be to divesting from white supremacy and imperialism. If we don't center that divestment, then people will replicate white supremacy within and through their ancestral relationships--and I don't want anything to do with that!
Eli:
Honestly, it’s essential because of colonization and white supremacy. Sometimes I imagine how we could meet and work together as humans if there had never been any conquest or empire, but that’s not the world we live in. In this iteration of life, it is vital to tend to the legacies of harm because anything else would be spiritual bypassing and violence. Trying to elide this reality only serves to prop up white supremacist culture and colonial mindset.
Most white folks have been socialized to understand that nothing is off limits to us. That we can have anything we want if it feels right, if it feels like something that should be ours, and/or if we personally find it helpful. We (white folks) also have been, and continue to be very empowered to take bits from other cultures and belief systems and remix them a little and then sell them as a fully formed offering. This is incredibly violent, but you can buy it on amazon so it’s normalized, you know? So I think a lot of folks, especially white folks, aren’t aware of how damaging and awful this type of behavior is.
I think that as a white person teaching in a spiritual space, it is non-negotiable that this is part of the conversation. It is our responsibility to tend to the wounds that our ancestors created in this earth and in the collective. In my opinion, healing these wounds will be the work of many generations. So we have to start now.
The name of your class is Accessing Transcestral Wisdom. Can you share a piece of wisdom you’ve learned from your transcestors?
Zel:
Wearing a helmet won't stop the unlearned lesson from repeatedly hitting you over the head.
Eli:
Oh wow, so much!! I think that one of my favorite pieces to come back to again and again is about the wisdom of Dandelion, who is also a transcestor. The message I was given was as follows.
“Your trancestors invite you to sit with weeds, like dandelion, and know that we, too, will always spring up through the cracks, regardless of how others perceive us. We, too, hold deep medicine in our bodies, if one takes the time to look. We, too, can survive nearly anything, because we have the advantage of deep roots, persistence, and unpredictability.”
I love taking dandelion tincture when I need to root into this medicine, which is most days!
Above: More of Charlie’s notes from Accessing Transcestral Wisdom, Oct. ‘23. Text reads: “Zel: ‘I was born into a body that was meant to be an altar to transition. I was born into a body that was meant to transition.’”
What one piece of advice would you give someone interested in starting a transcestor practice?
Zel:
Be humble, and learn to differentiate between these three voices
your ancestors voices
your own voice
the voices of family, friends & other social and political influences
Eli:
You don’t have to “believe” to start working with transcestors, but your experience will probably be a lot better if you approach it with open minded curiosity. I still remember talking to someone about something my transcestors told me and they were like “but how do you know who you were talking to?” And they wanted like…clear data. It’s not going to be like that! But if you let yourself stay open and curious, you may begin to notice shifts in your life.
Eli: You don’t have to “believe” to start working with transcestors, but your experience will probably be a lot better if you approach it with open minded curiosity.
Understand it may be subtle at first (and it may not be). Just try to maintain open curiosity in this work. If something calls your interest, follow it (within reason - see cultural misappropriation answer, lol). If you feel drawn to research a certain person or cook a certain food, follow that! If a certain animal or plant continues to catch your eye, wikipedia that shit and see what you find.
And maybe most of all, sign up for our class! The absolute wealth of information, experience, and community we are offering is truly beyond. This is a class that would have saved me years of struggle. I am grateful for the struggle, but still!
Describe something beautiful.
Zel:
The sound of crunching leaves on the ground in the fall, just before they become soft enough to merge with Earth: a reminder that outside of people-centered systems, Death is almost always a process of nourishment.
Zel: Outside of people-centered systems, Death is almost always a process of nourishment.
Eli:
I have…so many answers to this! But okay. In Los Angeles, around February, spring starts to creep in around the edges. Our seasons are not the sudden shifts I grew familiar with in my Missouri upbringing. Rather they are slow progressions, one season slowly melting into the other, so slowly that they almost seem indistinguishable at times.
Anyway, a late afternoon in late February. The light still leaves too early, but the sun is gentle and warm. A cool breeze comes off the Pacific year round. Flowers are beginning to blossom…camellias abound, and many flowering trees are exploding with buds. The evenings are cold but the daytime is sweet and warm, not at all hot. Sometimes it rains, and especially if you’re out hiking in in a native plant garden, the petrichor is overwhelming. It makes you stop in your tracks, close your eyes, and just breathe for a few moments. For those moments, you are aware that you are always connected to the earth and every form of life within it. The seeds you have been tending all winter start to burst, ever so slowly. The green shoots will soon peek up from the soil. You are wildly alive, and so are the plants and the pollinators. The earth is awakening.
Lastly, the final question I ask everyone: What does the word “devotion” mean to you, and what are you devoted to?
Zel:
Devotion, to me, is a heart-centered commitment that serves as a North Star for everything I do. I am devoted to "nourish[ing] the trees that will bear the fruits of freedom," which is a partial quote from Solomon Mahlangu, a South African anti-apartheid martyr.
Eli:
To me, devotion (as a verb) refers to consistently showing up from a place of love, to the point of and including ritual and beyond, until the practice is folded into your bones and becomes a part of the fabric of your life.
My most utter devotion is to trans people, transimaginality, and specifically doing everything in my power to make the world a better place for trans people. I also “do” devotions daily to my ancestors, transcestors, and several other entities, and endeavor to work these devotions into my life not only when I am actively tending my altar, but also when I am just going about the mundane activity of my life.
One of my favorite acts of devotion is that every two weeks or so, I create a bouquet of flowers for Venus/Inanna and place it on her altar. I use the remaining flowers to create a bouquet for Marsha P Johnson and place that in front of her image on my main altar. This is because of the story that Marsha used to sleep under the tables of the flower sellers, then she would take their cast off flowers and weave them into flower crowns. So I do this to honor that part of her legacy.
Accessing Transcestral Wisdom begins May 1st, 2024. Find out more and register below!
About Zel and Eli
Isazela "Zel" Amanzi (They/He), M.S.Ed, CYT is a Blacqueer, neuroqueer, agender transbeing, sacred energy educator, facilitator, speaker, and writer. With formal and community training in social justice education, child development, western Reiki, and tantric yoga, he centers his practices and teachings on the intersections of disability justice, neurodiversity, ancestral connection, energy work, somatic inquiry, personal transformation & counter-colonial community-building at the margins. Zel is also a poet, a gardener, and an analog enthusiast. They are a co-founder of Trans Futures Collective and meditation and sound practitioner with Cuties LA. You can join their public classes, or hire him for private sessions and consulting. @transgressivemedicine + zelamanzi.substack.com
Eli Lawliet, Ph.D., (he/him) is dreamer and weaver of The Gender Doula. In addition to a decade of experience researching trans healthcare, law, policy, and history, he has formal training as a full spectrum doula, breathwork facilitator, and tarot reader, as well as many years of surviving the world of poverty wages and retail work. The broad scope of his experience directly informs the equally broad spectrum of his work as The Gender Doula. Though he was born in Oklahoma and raised in Missouri, Eli currently lives in Los Angeles (Gabrieliño-Tongva, Chumash, & Kizh land) with his partner, three cats, a dog, and four snakes.
I learned so much from reading this, and really love Eli's answers for defining queerness and devotion.