a blurb about “sacred liquids that lubricate our calling” a conversation between Lea T and Castiel Vitorino Brasileiro
It must have been between before or after my trip to Brazil in 2021, in the frenziness of a foggy Covid19 era. A friend, Felis, whom I went to Brazil with, sent me a link to a podcast called “macumbas de travesti”, to an episode called “líquidos sagrados lubrificam nosso chamado (in Portuguese)” (translation: “sacred liquids lubricate our calling”) hosted by one of my favorite trans fem/ travesti artists of all time, Castiel Vitorino Brasileiro. In the episode, Castiel converses with and interviews a guest, her trans fem /travesti sister-friend Leandra. The episode is in Portuguese, and they exchange life journeys and stories of finding languages and spiritual philosophies in and outside of Brazil for their trans lives, for their bodies in transit, and their bodies in conversation with the divine. Leandra speaks of an arrival, one that is intuitive and effortless to a path of plant medicine. In this cosmology in the making, or unfolding as we hear, animals are messengers, portals are a daily encounter and she finds comfort in the sacred.
Even though I am not a trans woman nor, travesti as they are, and yet, as a transexual, in a constant mutation that does not unfold alone but within encounters of affect, similar to the ones they describe with plants, animals, water, spirits, minerals, crystals… My embodied practices arrive from these encounters. I shift as a body, performer, human, collectivist, dancer, organizer, writer, vessel out of these encounters. What moved me in this conversation was to find these similarities of transiting, “transmuting” with other species. It is the plant (medicine) that orientates the conversation according to Castiel. She tells Leandra: “our purpose is transit. It is the possibility of walking. To modify. (...) within an encounter of transition, be it energetic, hormonal, or material”. She calls this “ancestralidade interspecifica”, or interspecific ancestry, that is, “ancestry between different species”. Then, Leandra responds: “the medicine (the plant), it had an attention towards our bodies. Before it would knock me down and pull my ego out, the plants would speak to me. I felt that care, the vehemence manifesting in them being on our side. Everything was alright”. This triangular intimate narration between Castiel, Leandra and medicinal plants inspired my MA thesis: “re)entering an erotic metaphysical garden of revolt(ades)”.
(from my MA thesis “(re)entering an erotic metaphysical garden of revolt(ades)” graduated in Spring 2025.)
