Void of Course

Spring 2016 Resident 

We will be joined in our Magic investigation by Spring resident Void of Course!

Void of Course is a platform for female identified visionaries that takes feminist inspiration from the “void of course” Moon. “Void of course” is an astrological term for a period of time when the Moon is transitioning between signs in the zodiac and is unaspected by any other celestial influence. While historically considered to be an unfortunate or misaligned astrological period for deliberate actions, we celebrate the metaphoric possibilities of the uninfluenced moon as a spiritual location for female mystics on journeys into uncharted personal and collective unknowns. In creatively engaging with our own “unoccupied” spaces, we heal ourselves and make accessible our capacity for giving artistic and spiritual authority to ourselves. We choose to celebrate our integrated identities as women, artists, seers, and healers. We offer ourselves power and transcendence in a patriarchal spiritual world which does not readily give us agency, and an art world which does not readily give us place.

Void of Course is organized by Grace Kredell and Eliza Swann.
Participating artists include: Liz Armstrong, Maja D’Aoust, Jaye Fishel, Amanda Yates Garcia, Margaret Haines, Grace Kredell, Marcella Kroll, Molly Larkey, Machine, Sarah Manuwal, Linda Montano, Saewon Oh, Krista Schwimmer, Penny Slinger, Eliza Swann, Amy Von Harrington, Shauna Steinbach, Monica Uszerowicz, Catherine Wagley, Meg Whiteford, Marty Windahl and more…

 

Cybele Talk & Ritual with Maja D’Aoust
Saturday, Apr 2, 7-9pm

Maja D’Aoust will be talking about Cybele and performing a Cybele ritual. Cybele was originally an Anatolian mother goddess; she has a possible precursor in the earliest neolithic at Çatalhöyük, where the statue of a pregnant, seated goddess was found in a granary. She is Phrygia’s only known goddess, and was probably its state deity. Her Phrygian cult was adopted and adapted by Greek colonists of Asia Minor and spread from there to mainland Greece and its more distant western colonies from around the 6th century BCE. In Greece, some city-states, notably Athens, evoked her as a protector, but her most celebrated Greek rites and processions show her as an essentially foreign, exotic mystery-goddess who arrives in a lion-drawn chariot to the accompaniment of wild music, wine, and a disorderly, ecstatic following. In Rome, Cybele was known as Magna Mater (“Great Mother”). Maja will introduce a long forgotten ancient Cybele goddess ritual which has the roots of April Fools day contained within it, as well as perform the Cybele ritual.

VOID OF COURSE Opening 
Saturday, Apr 9, 6-9pm

The opening evening for a 2-day visual art show hanging in the main space of WCCW with works by Jaye Fishel, Grace Kredell, Margaret Haines, Saewon Oh, Machine, Museum of Woman, Eliza Swann, Shauna Steinbach, Amy Von Harrington, Meg Whiteford. Sarah Manuwal curates a film program screening in the Feminist Library. A group oracle session led by Amy Von Harrington and a residency blessing offered by Tanya Love will take place during the evening. The exhibition will also be on view Sunday, April 10th from 12-5pm

 

Special readings in the Feminist Library:

Donation Based Astrology and Energy Readings with Grace Kredell
Sunday, Apr 10, 2-5pm

Grace Kredell is a writer, intuitive, astrologer, and arts organizer based in New York City and Los Angeles. She first began giving readings with a personal collection of movie ticket stubs. Since 2014, she has trained with Liliana Barzola Read of Lotus Lantern Healing Arts in energy healing and clairvoyance. She has also studied ritual magic and sacred arts with Briana Saussy and is currently apprenticing with Adam Elenbaas learning Traditional & Archetypal Astrology. Grace received a BA in Film Studies and Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality studies from Wesleyan University. Her interdisciplinary approach emphasizes active imagination and DIY problem solving with a focus on mystical scholarship and creative acts of resistance through adaptation of esoteric traditions.

 

Tarot Readings with Liz Armstrong
Sunday, Apr 17th, 2-5pm

Liz Armstrong is a writer, creative strategist, teacher, mystic, tarot reader, sometimes sax player, and most recently in-house spiritual consultant for forthcoming television series Shut Eye. Her work has been published in national culture magazines, essay anthologies, and a university textbook on critical pop culture writing. She’s spoken at universities and startup cultures about running wild and storytelling, toured the US and Europe as a performance artist, led a workshop on divine querying for the Golden Dome’s High Priestess series, and instigated breakthroughs in interpersonal communication with corporate clients and spiritual seekers alike.

Discovery is a lifelong commitment.  As a dedicated student of the tarot for more than a decade, this is exactly how Liz Armstrong reads the cards—as an investigation into ideals and dynamics that serve one’s highest purpose, with clear and honest direction from the archetypes and her star guides.

 

Donation Based Tarot Readings with Amanda Yates Garcia
Sunday, Apr 24th, 2-5pm

Amanda Yates Garcia is a writer, artist and professional witch based in Los Angeles. She leads workshops, reads tarot, conducts shamanic and other healing ceremonies under her title as the Oracle of Los Angeles. Her events have been featured in Time Out and the LA Weekly and various other publications. As an art witch she has been appeared as “Real World Witch” at ESMOA and in the “Tapping the 3rd Realm” exhibition at the Laband and Ben Maltz galleries. Stay connected with the Oracle by signing up to her mailing list here.  

 

Speak Up! Communication with Plants, Animals, Weather, Ourselves, Our Community
moderated by Saewon Oh, Eliza Swann, and Grace Kredell

Monday Apr 18, 7-9pm

As a group, we will learn techniques for opening the throat chakra, communicating with plants, animals, and weather, and discuss as a group ways in which communication with all living things leads to community building and deep insight into ourselves and each other. Discussions will address overcoming muteness, cultural shame and silencing, using your voice, and deep listening practices. This workshop is facilitated by Grace Kredell, Saewon Oh, and Eliza Swann.

 

The Vessel and the Void with Eliza Swann
Friday, Apr 23, 6-8pm

There are few exercises that can get us into the oracular state as deeply as scrying. Scrying comes from the Old English word descry meaning “to make out dimly” or “to reveal.” Scrying is an auto-deepening trance practice, traditionally achieved by staring into a smooth black surface. Ancient Egyptians used bowls filled with ink, oil, or blood, Aztecs used slabs of obsidian, Ancient Persians used a chalice filled with water, the Celts used darkened brass plates, and many contemporary diviners simply paint a mirror black. My favorite technique for scrying is to fill a bowl or vessel with water and sumi ink so that you have a deep black abyss to stare into. You can use the ink from your divining session to paint or write with afterward. During this two hour workshop we will make our own individual scrying vessels out of clay, learn the history and meaning of the art, and practice scrying together as a group. All participants will be sent home with a scrying vessel, a workbook, and tools and techniques for finding guidance and illumination through the ancient art of staring into the void.

Eliza Swann is an interdisciplinary artist, tarot reader, teacher, clairvoyant, and hypnotherapist based in Los Angeles. Eliza has trained in hypnotherapy at the Isis Centre in England, Hindu cosmology and yoga with Dr. Vagish Shastri in Benares, India, Tarot and Western Magical Practice with the Builders of the Adytum Western Mystery School, and has recently received a Master’s degree in Fine Art from Central St. Martins in London. Her work has been exhibited internationally – most recently at the Beijing Film Academy in Beijing, China and Oxford Modern Art in Oxford, England. She is the founder of the Golden Dome School, a nomadic mystery school dedicated to studying the triangulation between art, science, and spirit for the advancement of planetary consciousness

 

Mystery Jacket Construction Night
Friday, May 6, 6-9pm


Hosted by Grace Krendell and Anna Kukla
In this healing arts activity, participants will be asked to bring a jacket for re-purposing. As a group, we’ll fashion and transform these jackets using sewn on materials, fabric paint, and distressing techniques with help from stylist Anna Kukla.

As we explore how we energetically invest clothing with certain meanings and powers, together we’ll create a group identity – energy that we can access after we’ve gone home. Through the vehicle of jackets created in intentional space, we’ll experiment with merging the idea of healing, even protective clothing with a collective spirit. As a group, we’ll decide if we want to associate the jackets with a mantra, collective name/banner or some other such collective agreement. At the end of the experience, we’ll take a group photo to celebrate our discoveries and the beautiful jackets we’ve made.

 

Make Your Own Alchemical Oracle Deck
With Jaye Fishel of Bullhorn Press and Eliza Swann of The Golden Dome School,

Saturday, May 7, 2-5pm

Bullhorn Press Studios, Highland Park
Alchemy, the secret art of the land of Khem, is one of the oldest sciences known to the world. Alchemy is a complex early form of chemistry, with philosophic and magical associations that are concerned with the attainment of an ecstatic state of communion with the entire Universe. The Alchemical body of art and literature are all centered around the process of realizing this divine unity on an esoteric and exoteric level through symbolically represented laboratory processes. Together, we will learn what some of these processes are, and communally create a deck of Alchemical Oracle Cards. During this three hour workshop Eliza Swann will offer a brief introduction to the history of alchemy, a discussion of some common visual tropes in alchemical imagery, and will finally lead a guided meditative exploration of the seven steps that make up the alchemical opus. This will be followed up by a visual exploration / drawing session. Jaye Fishel will then give each participant the tools to make an alchemical “card” on the Bullhorn letterpress illustrating a part of the Alchemical process or a symbolic image that is resonant. By the end of this three hour session, we will have communally created a “deck” of Alchemical Oracle cards that each participant can take home. Students will also learn the basic principles of printing on a 219 Vandercook letterpress.

 

The Art and Life of Penny Slinger presented by Penny Slinger
Sunday, May 15, 1-4pm


Penny Slinger, sometimes Penelope Slinger, is a British-born American author and artist based in California. As an artist, she has worked in different mediums, including photography, film, and sculpture as a “feminist surrealist”. She is the author of “50% – The Visible Woman” (1971), “An Exorcism” (1977), “The Erotic Sentiment in the Paintings of India and Nepal” (1991), and “Sexual Secrets” (1999). She is the creator of the “Dakini Oracle Deck”, a system of divination based on the authors’ work in the Ranipur Jharial Temple of Orissa, India. The temple contains stone carvings of 64 Dakinis, ancient symbolic representations of the female principles of intuitive wisdom. The Dakinis are the guardians of the deeper mysteries of the self, and it is through them that the secrets of inner transformation are opened. Penny will be presenting a slideshow about her life and work, with time for a Q & A afterward.

 

Female Nonconformists Discussion
Monday, May 16, 7-9pm


In a 1971 etching, Dorothy Iannone laments, “I’m so weary of patriarchy / Oh Ariadne come show the way / Let’s go where the lively reveled.” The accompanying imagery depicts a woman and man fending off lions in a forest before making love. The man soothes the lion by playing a trumpet and the woman “augments,” as Iannone’s text puts it, with her voice. Even in her search for freedom, she’s stuck in a helpmate role. A few years earlier, in the margins of a cookbook that doubled as an artist’s book, she had written, “How come almost no one admires me for my no marriage stance?” The status quo was always in her way. Join for a brief presentation on artists like Iannone, who have tried to identify the proscribed paths and social mores that limit them, and then used their art to map out, or access, other paths. Or maybe they’ve used art to learn to live off-course, with no path at all. A discussion on what we’re supposed to want, what we actually want, and what paths we find available to us will follow. In addition to talking, we’ll try mapping and drawing our way into a wider sense of understanding and possibility.

 

Reclaiming the Witch Ritual with Marcella Kroll
Saturday, May 21, 7-9pm

Please join Artist + High Priestess, Marcella Kroll for a lively and informative discussion around the topic of Witch Hunts + Persecution and ways of healing the archetype of the Witch. The Full Moon will also provide a beautiful opportunity to come together in ritual, to drop old wounds and harmful persecution imprints from society and ancestral lineage. While calling back and reclaiming the WITCH for our empowerment, wisdom, and strength. Come as you are…

 

Void of Course Meditation with Jessica Snow
Monday, May 23, 7-9pm


Since 2011, Jessica Snow’s bright imagination, the magical quality of her voice and her friendly demeanor have made her a popular and beloved spiritual guide in her hometown of Los Angeles.  In 2015 she successfully crowdfunded and published her first book 99 VISIONS, a well-received illustrated collection of her signature meditations.  Jessica writes, records and leads inventive mystical experiences that are profound, pleasurable and visionary. Her specialties are beautifully modern crystal, nature and celestial meditations. Her main purpose is to get you back in touch with your own magic.

 

May Mystics in Residence:

Reiki and Chakra Attunement with Sarah Manuwal
Sunday, May 1, 2-5pm

Sarah will provide a portable massage table, healing crystals, tuning fork, reiki/healing music. In addition she will also provide little cups of tea after to aid in the cleansing/detoxification process.  As well as drawing a flower/plant oracle card in the beginning of the session.

 

Tarot and Chromotherapy Mapping Sessions with Eliza Swann
Sunday, May 8th, 2-5pm

*CHROMOTHERAPY MAPPING involves getting a holographic body portrait painted on watercolor paper with color interpretations given throughout the session.

 

Naturopathic Healing with Pearl Bitters
Sunday, May 22nd, 2-5pm

I am a certified Naturopath with training in nutritional Ayurvedic and Chinese nutrition and bodywork techniques, as well as energy healing. I provide a holistic prescription that combines nutritional, physical, and mental exercises for most health and emotional concerns. I specialize in women’s health, mental health, and digestive disorders. All prices and hours are sliding scale, and determined by you, the client. I accept cash or checks. I am open to barter, show me what you got.  I do not accept insurance. I will craft a homemade “workbook” based on initial consultation to give you all your self-care tools, tailored to your needs, wants, and concerns. Each workbook comes with a topical product and recipe for making t home. Tinctures and teas also available upon request.

Tarot Readings with Monice Uszerowicz
Sunday, May 29, 2-5pm

Donation based