Conjuring Creative Courage feat. Dr. Giavanni Washington

Creativity is hard AF, and sharing it with the world can be terrifying. That’s just one reason why I’m so in awe of my guest this week, Dr. Giavanni Washington. She had the passion and persistence to develop a stunning oracle deck that honors African Goddesses with photography of amazing black women. She’s here to talk about why she felt required to birth this project into the world, and how she sustained the belief in herself that was necessary to make it a reality.

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Mentioned:

Dr. Giavanni Washington is the creator of the Black Goddess Within Oracle Deck, which is available to pre-order at https://www.drgiavanniwashington.com/deck. She is also an intuitive healer, mother, speaker, and spiritual guide who holds a doctorate from UCLA’s department of World Arts and Cultures and was recently selected for the California Creative Creative Corps Artist and Culture Bearer Fellowship by the California Arts Council.

The African Goddess Rising Oracle card deck by Abiola Abrams https://womanifesting.com/goddess-oracle-cards/

Make Magic:

So much of cultivating the courage to create is about honoring yourself and your vision.

Allowing yourself to feel the desire for things that mainstream culture tells you aren’t appealing,

and investing the time and energy that you and your creations truly deserve.

Transcript: Conjuring Creative Courage feat. Dr. Giavanni Washington

NATALIE MILLER: Welcome to Mind Witchery. I’m your host, Natalie Miller, and I’m so glad you’re here.

Hello, my sweet listener. I have such a treat for you today. Today's episode is a conjuring, meaning it is a guest witch joining me to talk about bringing a certain something into the world. And this woman, Dr. Giavanni Washington, is joining me to talk about conjuring creative courage. I'm so excited to tell you that Giavanni has created the only Oracle deck in the world to feature real Black women embodying African goddesses.

Giavanni is an intuitive healer. She's a mom, she's a speaker, she's a spiritual guide, and she is a woman who trusted her creative impulse, who created this Oracle deck not once but twice. The second expanded version of the Black Goddess Oracle deck has just been produced by Hay House, and you can find it at your favorite online realtor. Without further ado, here is the conversation that Giavanni and I had about what it took for her to take this dream, this vision, and make it a reality. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

[Music]

NATALIE MILLER: Dr. Giavanni Washington, I'm so happy that you are here today on Mind Witchery. Welcome.

DR. GIAVANNI WASHINGTON: Thank you. Thank you for having me. I'm excited to be here.

NATALIE MILLER: OK. So you have, I think, made a dream come true that many people I know dream for themselves. You have not only created an Oracle deck, like, your own Oracle deck, you also got a Hay House deal, and it is going to be distributed kind of like as broadscale as it can be. So I'm so excited to dive into everything it took for you to get to this place, and so excited to get your thoughts on experience of creative courage, because that is what I know had to—you had to have had that in like abundance in order to make this happen.

DR. GIAVANNI WASHINGTON: Oh, I love this framing. I love it.

NATALIE MILLER: [laugh] It's so exciting. OK. So the Oracle deck, tell us all about it.

DR. GIAVANNI WASHINGTON: This is the Black Goddess Within Oracle deck. I actually—you won't be able to see it—but I have a proof deck in my hands. I got that a couple weeks ago, so that's really exciting.

NATALIE MILLER: It's gorgeous.

DR. GIAVANNI WASHINGTON: It's gorgeous, right?

NATALIE MILLER: It's gorgeous, yeah.

DR. GIAVANNI WASHINGTON: It's a 44-card deck that's got 29 Goddess cards and 15 Ancestral Wisdom cards. And the 29 Goddess cards feature real Black women meeting Goddesses from Africa. So these are not illustration. These are not models. These are real like mothers, aunties, sisters, you know, cousins. These are people that you know. These are people that you are. And I think it's really important, since we're diving all the way in, one of the big griefs that I carry is the loss of the stories in the middle passage, you know.

It's everything that went down with the people who were either drowned or came over and then were separated, you know, through centuries from their culture and their history and their ways, all the culture ways. And I feel like this work is stitching up that rift. So we're stitching. Like, we did stitching within the collage, and we're stitching the women back into their sights of power, you know, in Africa, and that's in various places in Africa.

NATALIE MILLER: Full chills [laugh], full chills. And, you know, when you said you were stitching up the rift, I had this vision as you said that of like you can do that in a decorative way. I don't know if you've ever seen people like embroider a rip, like, embroider it to bring it back together, because that is what I see you doing here. I see you stitching up the rift, but bringing like abundant beauty to that task.

DR. GIAVANNI WASHINGTON: For sure, yeah, absolutely.

NATALIE MILLER: So where was the first spark of inspiration for this project?

DR. GIAVANNI WASHINGTON: There were definitely two things that happened almost simultaneously. So the first deck—the second deck comes out in December, but we made the first deck in 2016. And so I think sometime in late 2015—I think that's about right—I was doing some sort of Goddess exploration with a group of Black women, and the Ferguson debacle happened. The men, the four policemen were acquitted, who had killed an unarmed Black teenager in Missouri.

And we were meeting on that day, and just I don't really remember the conversation. I'm just really clear that we all left with a charge to change the way the world saw the Black body, and the way that they treat it. Many of us had, you know, young Black children. I myself am a mother of a now 13-year-old Black male. And, you know, it's a real impalpable fear that the world does not see or treat Black bodies like they treat other bodies. And so in my—I mean, maybe it's a leap—but in my head, it made a lot of sense.

Well, let's combat all of these images and all of the, you know, the historical degradation and denigration of the Black body, and let's put these beautiful images into the world that are connected to a history. Because I think a lot of what happens around marginalization of Black bodies is connected to this fact that, like, they think that we don't come from any place. And it makes it very easy to put someone in the category of savage or animal when you're not connected to a history. But we come from a history.

NATALIE MILLER: I have to say that makes total sense to me, because I'm thinking of the imagery of that moment. Like, we saw there's that iconic picture of all of those police in riot gear, and the Black woman who like alone is standing to sort of like resist them.

DR. GIAVANNI WASHINGTON: Absolutely.

NATALIE MILLER: I mean, that image is seared into so many of our heads, I think, and does show, like, through seeing, we feel the dignity and the integrity and just fortitude of that—I did—of that woman. So that makes total sense that you would go there. OK. So that's number one is like let's—

DR. GIAVANNI WASHINGTON: That's number one.

NATALIE MILLER: —show not just beautiful images but also that are deeply kind of rooted and connected to—

DR. GIAVANNI WASHINGTON: Absolutely.

NATALIE MILLER: —history.

DR. GIAVANNI WASHINGTON: To a history that started before slavery—

NATALIE MILLER: Yes.

DR. GIAVANNI WASHINGTON: —right, to a history that's precolonial. We've also been here for thousands and thousands and thousands of years. And the second thing that happened was, you know, I was really into card decks. I started getting really into them maybe 12, 10 years ago. And I just realized I was using decks that didn't have people in them, because the decks that had people in them were people who didn't look like me. There were very few representations of deities and mythologies from Africa, and I was like, "Wait, this is not OK." And then I ordered—I finally found an Afro-Cuban Orisha tarot deck. And Oshun, who is, I think, one of the most well-known Goddesses from the continent of Africa was white—

NATALIE MILLER: [laugh]

DR. GIAVANNI WASHINGTON: —like glow-in-the-dark white. And I was like, "This will not stand." [laugh]

NATALIE MILLER: [laugh] I'm shocked. I just can't believe it, of course.

DR. GIAVANNI WASHINGTON: I think I had that deck for like 24 hours, and I got rid of it, and I was like, OK, we're absolutely making a deck. And I had no idea what I was doing. The irony is I can't draw, right?

NATALIE MILLER: [laugh]

DR. GIAVANNI WASHINGTON: So immediately, I had to go into team mode. Like, let's gather the people. I put out a call. Seven women showed up. We worked together. It wasn't, again, we weren't just taking pictures. We worked with the Goddess archetype, and then the specific Goddesses and their inner Goddess. And, I mean, I'm collapsing the process, but we created a deck, you know. And I think December of 2016, we came out with that first deck.

NATALIE MILLER: So I'm going to like take it maybe even a step further back to understand what sparked your interest in this mythology and in all of these Goddesses. When did that start?

DR. GIAVANNI WASHINGTON: You know, it's really interesting. I'm not into the Goddesses for the sake of, like, initially anyway, it wasn't necessarily about—well, no, because I think it actually was. [laugh]

NATALIE MILLER: [laugh]

DR. GIAVANNI WASHINGTON: I'm like no, no, actually I was pretty upset that there were no—I was like, "Why is, you know, God always a white male?"

NATALIE MILLER: Yeah.

DR. GIAVANNI WASHINGTON: I definitely have been having that conversation with myself since college—maybe even before college. I'm not really sure what sparked my interest. I think it honestly came from a deck. I think I had an Egyptian Oracle deck and, you know, the Egyptian Gods and Goddesses are very well explicated, you know. Everybody and their mama had—the literature is thick and deep with Egyptology. And I was like, well, there's the rest of the continent, right, and I as a, well, maybe as a West African percussionist and dancer, I've been dancing for, I don't know, since my early 20s, and drumming since my late 20s. Like, that's definitely where my soul gets fed.

I'm really putting this together all right now. The way that we got that particular music in America, it didn't come attached to a spirituality. Right? If you take the Afro-Brazilian traditions or the Afro-Cuban traditions, for example, they came with a religion. And the way that we got the West African drum and dance arts through the ballets of Africa, they were presented to European audiences, and so they were broken apart. They were, you know, they were broken open, and sensationalized for the stage. Right? And that's how we got the music in the beginning.

I think the first one was like in '59, 1959. It's not that there wasn't religion attached to it; that's just not how we got it. Right? And so there was a sort of deep spiritual question I had about this thing that was really healing me spiritually, drumming and dancing. I was finding a lot of healing in this community, but there wasn't an explicit spiritual doctrine associated with it. And maybe that's where my research started. I mean, I'm an ethnographer. I don't know if that answered your question.

NATALIE MILLER: It so does, and what I love about it is, like, what it sounds to me like you were doing was you were kind of going from like interest to interest, passion to passion, like, significance to significance. I think so often when we create amazing, beautiful things, it's not like we set out and we're like, "I know what I'm going to do. I'm going to make it." It's like, no, I actually really love this music, and I beyond love it. It is healing me. Why? Where did it come from? What is this actually about? I don't know. I kind of see you as like following your curiosity.

DR. GIAVANNI WASHINGTON: I mean, I ultimately wrote a dissertation about how diasporic populations mediate the trauma of slavery through communal drumming and dancing. So it's definitely [laugh] something that's interesting to me, do you know? [laugh] Like, I spent seven years studying it, and that's after playing and dancing for 15 years. Like, oh, there's something. Like, let's actually try to put words on what's happening here. Like, this is not a phenomenon that's unique to Giavanni.

Like, this is happening for communities across the country and across the world, really. Like, there's something about the djembe drum that has transformed the experience of West African music and dance outside of West Africa. You know, it is one of the bridges that I think is also healing, even in the absence of a spiritual doctrine.

NATALIE MILLER: Yeah. How is similarly your deck a bridge, like the djembe?

DR. GIAVANNI WASHINGTON: Oh, I see this. I see what's happening, Natalie.

NATALIE MILLER: [laugh]

DR. GIAVANNI WASHINGTON: Well, let's see. For one, so I've been really thinking about this concept of diaspora lately. And years ago, probably around 2016 actually, I got my DNA done through ancestry.com. I was excited, and I got back the list, and was like, great, I'm attached to, you know, 12 different countries in Africa. That's really unhelpful, right? Like, I knew that, but now I'm like there was something so vague about the information, it still meant that I couldn't connect myself to a particular place, but I could in fact connect myself to almost all the places.

And then I did African ancestry much more recently, and found that I was—my father's people come from the—my father's father's people come from the Bissa people and Burkina Faso. And so I think I found that out last year. But in 2006, I went to Burkina, and I spent maybe a couple weeks there. In 2007, I went back to Burkina, and spent seven weeks there, right? In 2020, 2021, I spent a year studying with Malidoma Somé, a shaman from Burkina Faso. So, like, Burkina's been calling to me, right, even though I had no idea that I'm genetically from this place.

And so I think the deck represents the diasporic diversity of—and I'm going to speak specifically about African Americans because that's my experience, but it's probably true for Africans in the Caribbean, Africans in Latin America. Because of the slave trade, this trade of enslaved Africans, we come from many different people, right? And it feels, to me, it feels—I don't know if "disrespect" is quite the right word. But it feels insufficient to say I am from this place, because I'm from all of these places.

I have all of that blood and all of that experience inside of me, all that ancestral wisdom inside of me. And that's why I think that this deck is different than an Orisha deck. It's different than an Egypt, you know, tarot deck, the Gods and Goddesses of Egypt. Like, it shows, demonstrates the beauty and the power and—I love this word—discernment. Like, the wisdom that's in these stories from all over the continent, I think, is much more representative of my diasporic experience than saying, "I'm only Orisha or I'm only [0:14:58 Nataru?] or I'm only this," because really I'm all of these things.

NATALIE MILLER: What I'm hearing is there is both a specificity and a multiplicity. So it's sort of like I want to be specific about the multiplicity, right? So, like, I don't want to—what I'm hearing, and please like correct me as I'm getting it wrong, but I'm hearing like, listen, it's so vague where we—I'm speaking of course of you, your African-Americanness—where we come from. It's like so on the surface, it's so vague. It's so erased. It's so—

DR. GIAVANNI WASHINGTON: Well, it's so violent is what it is.

NATALIE MILLER: Yeah, it's so violent. Yes.

DR. GIAVANNI WASHINGTON: Right? Like, it is a violent erasure, the fact that I do not know. And I have done quite a bit of work with my genealogy. We can go back about seven generations to Birmingham, Alabama, and also to Marshall, Texas. We were there for many, many, many generations. But beyond that, there's a big huge gap, right? And now I have this information that's more from the origin in Burkina, at least for one of my lines.

But there's still a lot of things that need to be filled in, and I feel like in many ways connecting with this deck, and the diversity in this deck, it allows, ooh, I'm going to say—I just got the feeling—like an ancestral imagination can fill in those gaps, right? It's a healing. Again, it's that sewing up of the rift, right? And I do, I claim all of Africa. I think colonialism, that is the gift, like, if there is a gift, that is the gift that colonialism gave me. They had ripped me from it, and so I'm going to claim all of it, right?

NATALIE MILLER: Yeah. And that's, I think, what I mean about the specificity and the multiplicity, right? It's like the specificity to say like, no, I don't want it to be a vague erased. Like, I want to fucking know. Like, I want to—

DR. GIAVANNI WASHINGTON: I want to know.

NATALIE MILLER: I want to know. And at the same time, it's like how can I honor how multiplex, how many different aspects, how complex this is without just kind of making it like, oh yeah, you know—I'm making like a gesture of like, you know—like Africa, right? It's like, no, it's actually like there are a lot of sides and places there. OK. So as you were ready to depict all of these Goddesses, you wanted to depict them with contemporary women. And I would just love for you to talk a little bit about like even where that idea came from.

DR. GIAVANNI WASHINGTON: There's something that brings it alive when you're using photography of real people versus photography of models or illustrations. You know, I think it probably was initially a practical consideration. One of the people working with me was a photographer, and I was like, "Well, you can be the photographer." And illustration felt a little more distant, like, it would put some distance between us and the magic of these stories. But honestly it was probably more practical in the beginning than anything else.

At this point, I'm really clear that we need—that the photography matters. It is unwieldy and expensive and time-consuming [laugh], right, and it matters. It is absolutely a choice that I would do again and again. Like, we're actually about to start making the Black God deck, and photography 100% without models. You know, there's something, there is a resonance that I think is captured in the—we use the verb "to meet" because they're not acting as if they're not—even "portraying" is not quite the right word.

But they're meeting, like, there's something that happens when that person puts on the outfit, right—and I'm not saying costume—but puts on the outfit, and puts on the makeup that's appropriate or—no, that's the wrong word—but aligned with that Goddess's story. And we know, even though they're taking a picture in front of a white or a green screen, we know what the background is going to look like. We have an idea of this ancestral vortex that we're going to put them in. There's something about all of those things coming together that creates a resonance that we don't get out of illustration.

NATALIE MILLER: Yeah. Well, I'm also thinking about how, you know, when you talk about the deck stitching together the rift, and when you talk about, well, when I suggest maybe also the deck is a bridge, it's like, well, yeah, so there needs to be a meaning between the person in the 21st century who is connecting, and then the kind of the energy, the concept, the story, the vibe of the Goddess.

DR. GIAVANNI WASHINGTON: And I think there's also another level. There's another meeting that happens, and I think that is the woman is also meeting herself, right? So there's a woman meeting the Goddess, but then there's all the work we've done to this point, all this personal development and introspection, and they're meeting a version of themselves in that. So, I mean, if you take a step back, my theory of change is we're using contemporary women to meet Goddesses from Africa to assert the humanity in contemporary Black people. Right? It's not quite a [0:20:19 tautology?], but that's where I'm at with it.

NATALIE MILLER: Yeah, I see it. So, I see, I'm so intrigued. I love this, like, this process. There's a kind of an outward-facing component of it, right, that this I am asserting humanity. I'm curious also about the inward-facing component in using the deck, either from people who've used the first version of the deck, that smaller version, or even just from yourself. Like, what is that like, the internal experience?

DR. GIAVANNI WASHINGTON: The first thing that came to my mind is—I don't know if this is the right phrase—but our pre-work. Like, the work that we did leading up to the actual photo shoot, we were using images. We were using the cards from the first deck. Well, here's the first deck. I don't know. I keep showing these to you like people can see them. But here's the first deck. I'm showing her the first card, the first deck.

NATALIE MILLER: And they're so beautiful, and it's just whetting their appetite to go get this deck for themselves. [laugh]

DR. GIAVANNI WASHINGTON: And we had a—one of our participants was visually impaired, and so we had someone—we began the practice of describing the card at the beginning of the session. It was so useful for everybody, right, like to take a moment, and to look at the card, and to feel, to, one, describe it or to listen to someone else describe it. Like, one, you begin to see things you haven't necessarily seen. Like, I've been looking at these cards for seven years, and I'm still seeing things I've never seen, and I approved them all. You know what I mean?

Like [laugh], I still—they're so rich and layered. But there's something that changes in me. I'll talk from my own experience. But there's something that changes in me when I am called, by listening to the description, to really focus in on every nuance in the card, and then to see, again, my mother, my sister, my cousin, my aunts reflected in these cards. Like, these women are me, and I am these women. Right? And these are not just women; these are Goddesses. I mean, they're real women, but they're also meeting Goddesses from a place that has this long history, and these stories that have all this wisdom and information.

And what that means for how that translates, like, in my personal experience is that anything that is possible for them, for these Goddesses, for these women who met these Goddesses, is also possible for me. And so I think it just cracks open the egg of possibility, right, and it's so different. When you google "God, image of God," 75% of the results are white male. And, you know, there's a lot of research that says that when you think that the gods or the supreme being belong in white male bodies that you also think people in leadership, people who are making decisions, people who are in charge and in management, those people should also have white male bodies.

It's like, well, where's the space for my body and, by the way, bodies who are the global majority, right? Where's the space for that? For all of the things that are imbued into the white male, supreme being, all of those qualities then can be ascribed also to bodies that look like mine. And I think that's what happens when you look, and work with, and hold these Goddesses from Africa.

NATALIE MILLER: Oh my gosh. OK. So I want to just run a highlighter over a couple of those things. One is I love that description of the deck cracking open the egg of possibility, because I use a lot of imagery in my coaching practice, and I find that there is something about imagery specifically that helps us to understand and process and experience. And with full respect to our visually impaired listeners, like, when I use decks, the imagery is definitely one of the most important parts, and the meaning is also important.

But I love that you, in your own kind of creation of the deck, had that, and using of it, had that experience of like, OK, hold on. Because I find a lot of times, people go straight to the little book, right? [laugh] You go, you pull the card, and you go straight to the little book. What does it mean? And I love this pause to say, no, wait, actually what's here? What am I noticing? What is there to respond to? What's sticking out to me? It's that sensory moment that is so important because I think that's what really helps us to be connected, right, to see like what is important in here.

DR. GIAVANNI WASHINGTON: It's very sensual, which I think is such an important piece of—I was going to say being a woman—but like being a human. We're so quick to go to our brains, and to stay out of our body, and I feel like stopping and sitting and holding and taking in the imagery puts us in our bodies, which will make like anything that comes after it so much better, right, so much more rich. The words that you're going to read in the little book are going to be so much better after you've sat and taken in the imagery.

NATALIE MILLER: Absolutely, yeah. And then I'm just thinking about, you know, moving through a world in which you google "God," and he's a white man, you look at the presidents, the leaders of all of the different, you know, like we can intellectually understand that that is the product of white supremacy, and patriarchy, and all the systemic oppression. But we're still swimming in it. [laugh] We're swimming in the images. And so, yeah, to feel and to see and to have that sensory experience, I love what you're saying there. I'm curious, when it does come to that meaning-making part of the deck, what does that look like to you? How do you think about that part?

DR. GIAVANNI WASHINGTON: You mean as a user or as a creator?

NATALIE MILLER: Like, I'm talking kind of about the little book part [laugh] of the deck. [laugh]

DR. GIAVANNI WASHINGTON: So let me tell you about this little book, and the effort that went into this little book. [laugh]

NATALIE MILLER: [laugh] You're like, "Don't call my book "little"." [laugh]

DR. GIAVANNI WASHINGTON: Well it's, you know, it's interesting because we are on the podcast, in the PR, like, we talk about the images, because that's the thing you can put out, and easily we understand immediately. And we're such, especially now with Instagram and all the other platforms, we're so image forward. And images contain a lot of information. This book [laugh] is important. It was hard won. This is not shit you can go and google, right? When I tell you that I bled and sweat for these words and for this information and for this wisdom, it was tough. It was tough. I had to put on all of my PhD skills to go get this information.

NATALIE MILLER: Where did you go, Giavanni?

DR. GIAVANNI WASHINGTON: All kinds of places. Like, it's proprietary now.

NATALIE MILLER: OK. Don't tell me. But, yes, I imagine so. I imagine so. Like, these are not easy thing…and I know, because I've actually tried to google. Nope. There's [laugh] really, even still, there's really not much.

DR. GIAVANNI WASHINGTON: There's really not, and there's a lot of bad information on the internet. That's the other problem, right? And then people cite all the same source. I was like, well, yeah, but that source is bad. I mean, one of the most delightful moments I ever had was—I don't even remember what Goddess it was. I think it was a Goddess from South Africa. I found a journal article from maybe the early 1800s. And on one side of the page, it had the Indigenous language, and on the other side of the page, I think it was English.

Sometimes I was translating from English to a colonial language, then to English. But I think this was the Indigenous language and then English. And so to see it wasn't an interpretation, you know what I mean? It wasn't what typically a white male was thinking what was happening at that time. It was, here's line one, here's line one, here's line two, here's line two, side by side. And that was like the most delightful. Like, I felt like I was being wrapped in the mythology coming out of the mouths of those people directly.

You know, I don't speak that language, but the translation was right there. Certainly, there was analysis after that. But also they presented, you know, the side-by-side translation. That wasn't something that I found often. You know, like I said, sometimes I'd have to go from like the Indigenous to Portuguese or Spanish or German, and then English. Portuguese and Spanish, I read and write pretty well, so I didn't have to get another layer of translation. But sometimes it was the third order and, you know, that information is hard. It's rough.

There are cases where you've got to go way far back because they don't talk about that Goddess anymore. Like, the Goddess doesn't exist. It's been subsumed. The Goddess has been subsumed, you know. And then there's also like the academic bullying that's happening in some spaces. Like, oh, don't read her stuff because, you know, we think she's a crackpot. Well, you think she's a crackpot because she's coming with a feminist lens, right, all this stuff. Like, she's maybe not a crackpot.

NATALIE MILLER: Yes. In a former life, I taught yoga, and I was super interested in like the Gods and Goddesses from India. Just I love—that concept makes visceral sense to me that there would be a multiplex deity, right [laugh], like, that it wouldn't just be one. And I totally know this thing that you're talking about is that, like, even when we're going to get as close to the original text as we can get, we're still getting translations by white men. We're still getting—there's kind of like a never-ending search, I think, for the Goddess.

DR. GIAVANNI WASHINGTON: I think this is exactly it. It is the never-ending search for the Goddess. And I will say this. This was a very interesting process for me, because I am an academic, well, I was trained as an academic. I ran away 10 years ago after I got my PhD. I was like, "OK, bye. See you later. I've done my, you know, I've done my time." But there was a part of the sort of, I guess, research integrity, like, I couldn't let things fly just because I'd seen them 10 other places. Like, OK, let me go see if I can really sort of validate or prove this, or disprove it as it were.

Like, there was one Goddess that was a God, right? It took me some time to figure it out, and I was like, oh, wait, no, hold on. That particular entity has to come out. But the flip side of this, and what I think is really the—I'm moving my hands around because it's like there's a texture to it—the juiciness, that's the word I'm going to use, the juiciness I think of this book is that once I was academically satisfied, my brain was academically satisfied, I could let it go, and open the portals, and let the Goddesses talk to me. Right?

So it wasn't just—it was enough to defend the Goddesses as Goddesses in some cases or, you know, bring them to light or bring a particular aspect of them to light. And then it was like I had to almost get their permission, you know. There were definitely Goddesses who didn't make it into the deck, and they opted out, because it wasn't my choice. It was their choice. They were like, "Not now." And certainly there are, you know, secret societies. Like, I'm not divulging any of those secrets because I don't have them because I'm not in those secret societies, right? Anything that is in this deck is here, I think, by grace of these particular Goddesses.

NATALIE MILLER: It sounds like with consent.

DR. GIAVANNI WASHINGTON: With consent, yeah. I mean, there was definitely some channeling happening once we got, like, once I could release my brain, it's like, OK, now we're going to open these other portals. And so there's this beautiful marriage, I think, of the two sides.

NATALIE MILLER: Oh gosh, that is so delicious. [laugh] That's the word that comes to mind. That just sounds—to have that solid, sturdy academic foundation channel, and then to get to pull the energy through the channel, like, that's just spectacular. So now that we understand, I think, a little more—thank you so much for sharing—about why and how you set about creating this deck, I just would love to ask you about your experience of going so fucking big with it—

DR. GIAVANNI WASHINGTON: [laugh]

NATALIE MILLER: —with your Hay House deal. Like, share as much as you like about that. Like, did they approach you? Did you approach them? Like, how did this happen?

DR. GIAVANNI WASHINGTON: You mean the contract with the largest international publisher of self-help and Oracle decks? [laugh]

NATALIE MILLER: [laugh] I mean, if you want to do a deck, that's the fucking way to do it. [laugh]

DR. GIAVANNI WASHINGTON: You know, when we made the first deck, I literally was joking. And I said it probably often, like, "Oh, I can't. You know, Hay House is going to pick this up, and we're going to do another deck." This was years and years ago. And I was in a coaching program, I guess, two years ago now. It was November of 2021. Maybe it was October of 2021. And this coach would ask a question, something to the effect of, "What's the most amazing thing that could happen to your business this week?" It was a question like that.

And I was like, "Well, I'd love to get an email from Hay House, with them offering to take me on and, you know, walk me through the steps." And it's really interesting because I really came at it from like an intern perspective. Like, I don't know what I'm doing, even though I'd already done it. Like, I don't know what I'm doing. And then there was nothing. And then a month later, she asked the question again. And I was like, "Yeah, I'm still waiting on that email from Hay House." And she did some behind-the-scenes stuff, and figured out who we needed to write at Hay House, instructed me to write an email, which was, in her words, very academic. [laugh]

NATALIE MILLER: [laugh]

DR. GIAVANNI WASHINGTON: And she sort of did some marketing [0:34:03 juji?] thing, and really framed it so that I was a partner, so that I was a colleague working with Hay House versus, in my words, like, "Well, they're so big and high and mighty. Like, clearly, they've got to teach me how to do this." And I think we sent the email, it was maybe the week before Thanksgiving, on a Monday. And then like three hours later, I had an email back from Hay. I had two emails from Hay House. I was on a call with them on that Thursday.

And then the next week, they said I would get a letter the next week, which I didn't get because of the holidays. But that following Monday, so literally it was two weeks later, I had an email offer from Hay House. And part of it was because I'd done the first deck, and I had this proof of concept. I think we sold 1,500 decks between 2020 and 2021. It was after Mr. George Floyd was murdered, and I think the world was in this sort of different place about racial reconciliation. And we sold 1,500 decks.

And I did that by myself, not knowing how to run ads but running ads anyway. And, yeah, so I think the proof of concept, I think the connection, I think getting help—I don't know that I would've pitched them without that sort of like, "Hey, here's a channel, and you can do it." Like, I definitely had never looked on their site to see how you present, how you propose to Hay House, even though it was something that was in my head.

NATALIE MILLER: Well, I mean, OK, (a) to everyone listening, it really begins with your desire. Like, a coach asked you, "What would be amazing? What do you want, basically?"

DR. GIAVANNI WASHINGTON: Yeah.

NATALIE MILLER: And you're like, "This is what I want." Like, the spark of desire is just so, so important. I mean, really, right, I don't want to put words in your mouth ever, Giavanni. Like, doesn't a spark of desire start all the things? Like, didn't it start the deck?

DR. GIAVANNI WASHINGTON: Well, I have big desires, so I'm going to go with yes. My desire is big. I don’t know. I was like, could you want less? I'm like, no, I can't.

NATALIE MILLER: No, no.

DR. GIAVANNI WASHINGTON: I want all the things.

NATALIE MILLER: No. We want big and, like, you know, desire, I mean, everybody's heard me on this horse, but like [laugh] watch me ride this horse around the arena. Desire is demonized, especially women's desire, especially, especially Black women's desires, right?

DR. GIAVANNI WASHINGTON: Yeah.

NATALIE MILLER: So it's like desire is demonized and, yet, it is power. It is the most potent power, and so, you know, beginning there. And then, like, thank goodness, you had a co-creator. Because I will say, like, I think, you know, there are so many co-creators who are like coaches and, I don't know, like copywriters and like, you know, all of these people. You had a co-creator, who took your desire seriously and was like—

DR. GIAVANNI WASHINGTON: She did.

NATALIE MILLER: —"All right, let's do it then."

DR. GIAVANNI WASHINGTON: She did. It was wild. It happened so quickly. It then took like six months to go from that offer letter to contract. Like, I'm still not sure why that took so long, but it's fine. And then it takes 12 to 18 months to publish, I mean. And so we spent February to September last year actually making the deck, like, doing all the pre-work, the photo shoot, and then the Photoshopping, and the research, and finishing up the little book.

NATALIE MILLER: The little book.

DR. GIAVANNI WASHINGTON: So I just got this—it was almost 12 months before I got the proof deck in my hand, which was way slower than when I did it. But I also am not, I mean, their first run is like 15,000 decks. So it's 10X to begin with. Now there's also Abiola Abrams. Abiola Abrams is another author who came out with a deck in 2021 called African Goddess Rising, and she also has a book about rituals, and she talks. She features—it's not just African goddesses; it's like heroes and heroines and queens and—there's another word—but from all over the diaspora.

And her deck has done really well. And so I think that also certainly paved the way. It's a Hay House deck, and so that certainly paved the way. But, I will say, being in the process, like, in the editing process, and in this—now we're in the, you know, later today I have a call with the social media team at Hay House. Like, I have call with the Hay House people, you know. So it is [0:38:12 wild?]. But it's really been—there has not been a single point where I was treated as an intern, not a single point, right?

And they're definitely collegial. They want to work with the authors more than once, and there has not been a single point where I said to myself, "Oh my god, I can't do this." I don't know what I thought, getting a deck published by Hay House. Like, it seems like something that was out of my reach. Like, I'm here to tell you the things are in your reach. They're in your reach, and they're doable. And it's not even like going out to get another skill set, and then doing it; just you can do it right now. Whatever the thing is, you can do it right now, you know.

NATALIE MILLER: I mean, I have to underscore again that co-creativity and even, you know, a lot of times if someone were to say like, "OK, I'm making a cookbook. It's all about vegan casseroles," or something, right? A lot of times, people are not saying, "Oh, there's these other cookbooks about vegan casseroles. Thank goodness. I'm so glad those other books about vegan casseroles are there because it's proof of concept, because it opens up the kind of interest in the market, and because there's more than one voice here, et cetera." Right? And so even just to hear you say, "Oh yeah, like, there is actually another deck and a book, and I'm so glad that they're there, because it helps to show the interest. It helps to demonstrate like the"—

DR. GIAVANNI WASHINGTON: A hundred per cent.

NATALIE MILLER: —you know. Like, that is countercultural, but that's that kind of like co-creative way, again, from the singular to the multiplex, right? No, we're all doing this. Like, we don't have to be individual geniuses taking the thing from start to finish. There can be many hands in the process—

DR. GIAVANNI WASHINGTON: That's right.

NATALIE MILLER: —and other people doing similar things. And that doesn't mean that mine isn't worth being out there

DR. GIAVANNI WASHINGTON: A hundred per cent. It's, I mean, our decks are different, you know. I mean, they are similar. But, listen, how many decks of European Goddesses exist?

NATALIE MILLER: Listen.

DR. GIAVANNI WASHINGTON: Hundreds, thousands.

NATALIE MILLER: Listen.

DR. GIAVANNI WASHINGTON: So if there's two now in the marketplace that represent Goddesses from Africa—and by the way, they're not identical. We don't have the exact same people in the deck. I mean, there's some overlap, but they're not identical.

NATALIE MILLER: Of course.

DR. GIAVANNI WASHINGTON: And, again, illustrations versus photography. You know, there's a whole process that we went through that didn't—they're just different decks. I don't how to say it. They're different decks.

NATALIE MILLER: Yeah, they're totally—

DR. GIAVANNI WASHINGTON: But they're just beautiful. Her book is powerful. Like, go read the book. Full of rituals.

NATALIE MILLER: Yeah. We'll put a link to it in the Show Notes too.

DR. GIAVANNI WASHINGTON: Right.

NATALIE MILLER: And of course, we will put a link to your deck in the Show Notes. This is so exciting. Now that like we kind of have all of this information about like you creating it, I'm just curious, like, what's the wisdom that you've extracted from this process? Like, what did you learn about you, about the world, about creativity? I'm just so curious, Giavanni.

DR. GIAVANNI WASHINGTON: Ooh, that's a good question. Like, the overwhelming thing that's coming up as you ask that question is, for me, so much of this was ancestral, and it was ancestrally driven. It was healing an ancestral wound. I say all the time, like, this is not necessarily something that I would've chosen. I feel like it was given to me, like, I was charged with it, because so much of it was not in my wheelhouse. Like I said, I don't draw. I'm a performing artist. I'm a drummer. I'm a dancer.

But making something with images that I have to really tend to, like, I couldn't just throw some shit together, right, like, I had to tend to this creation, I just got real clear at some point that this was—I hope this is not too woo-woo—but like this was clearly an agreement I made before I got here. Right? I can't not do it. Like, there is nothing that's going to take me away from this. And, you know, even at the beginning of this year, and I was like, you know, I'm doing all these things, I'm following instructions, I'm being obedient. And by obedient, I mean I'm listening, right?

And I need some like Earthly support here. I have Earthly obligations I have to meet. And when I tell you they came through, they came through. Right? Like, I feel like I'm going really far afield, but that is the wisdom that I'm taking from this, that I am being held up and propelled forward by like entire legions of ancestors from all over the continent of Africa, who want this work into the world, and that it really isn't about me at all. Even though I'm in, you know, in the middle of making it all happen, there's something else going on here.

It's about me, it's about these 27 women who joined me in this work, and their ancestors all working together. Like, we're all healing through this process. And that's why I would say it's ancestrally given and driven.

NATALIE MILLER: I love it's—and like what I'm hearing in there is it's ancestral. I'm hearing it doesn't, quote, unquote, make sense, right? It's like—

DR. GIAVANNI WASHINGTON: Yeah, girl. No.

NATALIE MILLER: It's not like, oh yeah, obviously that would be the thing I would do. It's like, no, actually. And I think that's really important when it comes to creative courage, right, is that it doesn't make sense. I don't know why you're so into vegan casserole. [laugh] I don't know, but you are. And so, right, like, just keep going. That's what I just like honor so much, and I'm so fucking impressed by with you, Giavanni, is you just kept going. It was like, oh, it's actually really hard to find these stories. I'm going to keep going. Oh, I can't draw. I'm going to keep going. Oh, I made a deck. It sold well. It had 13 cards. I kept going. Like, you just fucking kept going.

DR. GIAVANNI WASHINGTON: Well, I think it's really important to note that I think for that first run of the first deck, I bought 250 copies, and I probably gave away 125. It took me five years to give them away, right, and then I re-released the deck in 2020. So there was this long period where I was exhausted from the first time. It totally took me out. I left everything on the floor. And then re-released it in 2020, and here we go. Like, I guess I never stopped. It was always in my head. Then here we go again. It's started, and here we are.

NATALIE MILLER: That makes me feel really good as there are boxes of Time Witchery anti-planners [laugh] literally next to me as we're talking. [laugh] I'm like, when are these going home? And, yeah, you just got to, you just have to keep going.

DR. GIAVANNI WASHINGTON: Keep going.

NATALIE MILLER: You have to keep going. Oh my gosh, so delicious. OK. So for all of the people who are listening who are excited to use this deck—and these are going to be women with African heritage, these are going to be white women—I'm so curious, like, how do you want people to use this when you think about it getting into people's hands?

DR. GIAVANNI WASHINGTON: How I want them to use it? Oh, that's so interesting. I think using the deck is probably most advantageous if you use it as a daily practice. I'm a real big fan of a single card pull. Like, you can do complicated spreads, but you don't have to. I feel like a simple question—you know, what do the Goddesses have for me today? What do the ancestors have for me today?—and a single card pull. And what I like to—when I'm working with these energies with folks, I was like these are not intellectual questions that the deck is asking of you.

These are questions that have energy and resonance and queries that, again, are meant to crack open that egg of possibility. So it's about embodying that, and letting it work inside of you. That's what I would say to people. Like, let the energy work inside. This is not an intellectual exercise. It can be, but it will be much more effective if you let the energy in, if you let it activate inside of you, and let it work. And then the second thing I would say is that I believe that there is healing available for Black women, in particular, for all the reasons that we stated for the entire podcast. You're going to see yourself. You're going to be able to connect to it.

You may be pulling Goddesses that are from a place that you're from, that you have heritage from. You know, all of that is going to be healing. Then I think for white folks, it's really important for you all to take these conversations back to your communities. You have access to other white people in a way that we don't have access to, right? And this is going to hopefully change the way, literally create new neural pathways, you know, so that you have different reactions when you start to see Black bodies. And my hope is that people who normally have sort of an adverse negative physical reaction when they see Black bodies, I'm hoping to reverse that. And I'm hoping that you take that change back to your communities.

NATALIE MILLER: Yes. I'm also so excited to like deepen, and fortify, supplement—I don't know what the word is. Like, mythology is so important. Myth is so important, right, the lies that are true [laugh], right? Myth is so important. And the way that we receive myth in 21st century Western world, it's so reduced, and it's so redacted.

DR. GIAVANNI WASHINGTON: Edited.

NATALIE MILLER: It's redacted, right?

DR. GIAVANNI WASHINGTON: Yeah.

NATALIE MILLER: Like, there's all of these things that are just like cut out, and I'm so excited to like resupp…like to refortify, to get these stories, to read your not-so-little book—

DR. GIAVANNI WASHINGTON: [laugh]

NATALIE MILLER: —and really though to read your not-so-little book, and to be moved by that as well. It's just really—it's super exciting. Giavanni, thank you so much for being an exemplar of creative courage, and for sharing with us so like candidly about the process, and about your thinking, and about your calling. I'm just—I can't tell you how excited I am for you, and happy I am for you, and happy I am for all of us that you listened.

DR. GIAVANNI WASHINGTON: [0:48:05] thank you. Thank you for having me, Natalie.

NATALIE MILLER: Yeah. All right, my friends, again, you can find all the info about Giavanni's gorgeous deck in our Show Notes, and you can learn more about Giavanni on her website.

DR. GIAVANNI WASHINGTON: It's blackgoddesswithin.com.

NATALIE MILLER: [laugh] Blackgoddesswithin.com. All right. Thanks so much for listening, everyone. Bye for now.

Thank you for listening to this episode of Mind Witchery. To catch all the magic I’m offering, please subscribe to the show, or if you want a little bit of weekly witchiness in your inbox, sign up for my Sunday Letter at mindwitchery.com. If today’s episode made you think of a friend or loved one, your sister, your neighbor, please tell them about it. We need more magic-makers in this troubled world.

Like all good things, this podcast is co-created by stellar people. Our music is by fabulous DJ, artist, and producer, Shammy Dee. Our gorgeous art is by the sorcerers at New Moon Creative. Mind Witchery is produced in conjunction with Particulate Media, K.O. Myers, executive producer. And I am Natalie Miller. Till next time.

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