Elhoim Leafar - Part 2

Join us for the second part of this interview with a wonderful person from Venezuela who brings some insight into South American Spiritualism. I learned A LOT!
 
 Elhoim Leafar (NY) Author of 'Dream Witchery' (Llewellyn Books) is an astrologer, dowser, tarot reader, and urban spiritual worker from Amazonas, Venezuela. Elhoim was initiated into Traditional Venezuelan Spiritism.
 www. Elhoimleafar.com
 https://www.instagram.com/elhoimleafar/

Transcript

0:00

Welcome to Belief, Being and Beyond with your host, Granddaughter Crow. know, so Dream Witchery, you can get it wherever you get books on Amazon or on, you know, wherever you get books. I love that and you know You guys have to follow, please, or be one of his readers on Instagram. I'll put a shout out to your Instagram channel. But true to form, what you do more than what I see other people do on Instagram is you share other people's work. So that's how I came to know you was one of my books. You know, as an author, you labor over the book, you get the book out, then you hold the book and you're just amazed that it's there. But you wonder what it's doing in the world. And I saw on your Instagram channel, my book, one of my book was in your stacks, Belief Being and Beyond. And I was like, it's real. My book is really out there in the world. It's a fascinating book. Yeah, it's it's really out there. And so that's one thing. You know, your channel really helps to promote so many different other authors. I see The Missing Witches books out there. I see Sherry's Shown that hoodoo lady. I see Lilith, Lilith Dorsey. I see. I love Lilith. I would put my hands on fire for her. Lilith was. I mean, I had a chance to meet Lilith. Years before that great book, Orisha's Goddesses and Voodoo Queens, I met her before. She was so kind, so nice. She was so respectful and so understanding of of me with my language struggle and everything. She was always there. And then I always have this feeling like she's going to do something great, something really big. And when she came out with that book, Orisha's Goddesses and Voodoo Queens, years ago, I. I find that book so empowering, so magical. I because I was initiated in Candomble and Santeria many years ago and we didn't have a book like that one. I wish we had a book like that one because that could give us a different perspective because we are talking about very old traditions which in a certain way they are so traditional that they continue being very misogenic. It's taking certain aspects and the woman continue being like, you know, in a second term, in a second place. And having that book was like, I wish my sisters, my mom, everybody in my family could have the chance to read that book. It's the same with your book. Your book was so deep diving into your book is literally diving into the life of somebody else from a different eyes, from a different perspective. It's like, oh, you know. I have been seeing all of these beautiful mountains in the north for so long time, but finally I had a chance to find a road in the middle so I can walk in the middle and learn all of this stuff going around that I was seen it from outside. Now I am inside from a different perspective. And that's your book, which I really find fascinating. I really love all of these books because many times I find. So much empowering and so much inspiration in there. So much courage to put these stories outside that nowhere tell before for nobody else. And that's the reason why I'm always hands down. And this can be very cliche, but I'm always hands down for which is for women, women in politics, women in every department, women teaching. Women in everything because women have so many stories that have not been told before because we just focus in the man that I want more women writing. I want more women doing podcasts. I want more women leading events. I want more women leading corporations because this world has been dominated for men for thousands of years literally. And as you can see around, we have not made a very good job. And it's literal. And it's real. We need more women. And just like women doing books are amazing, I'm pretty sure that women doing politics, women doing negotiations will do even better if you just give them the chance. Your book is not another book like yours out there. Missing Witches is not another book like that one out there. Orisha's Goddess and the Voodoo Queens of Lilith Dorsey is not another book like that one. her books. Are beautiful and are not other books like those out there. We have so many amazing witches, women in this community and trans women also writing books, books with an amazing perspective too. That if you just take the time to sit down and read them, they just change your whole perspective and everything that you were thinking before from your arrogance. Oh, I knew it. About this, when you read it from the perspective of a woman, is somebody just punch you in the face and you're like, oh, I didn't know anything about this. I was just being arrogant and entitled to assume that I was knowing things. I just was seeing, you know, the superficial part because woman goes deeper on everything because they have certain intuitive natural understanding on things because. I don't know if it's because the our society is so difficult against women. I don't know if it's something in their nature. I don't know if it's the spirit of the motherhood in them, but it's something so intuitive that. For you give a man a tree and the man will just cut a tree and ask what they can do with the tree. You give a woman a tree and she want to take the tree. She want to plant the seeds. She want to bring the flowers. She want to take the fruit. She want to make some juice. She want to sell juice in the corner. She want to take other parts of the tree. She want to make a table. She want to make chairs. She want to see it from a different perspective that the man can't see. I love, I love that. And just a shout out. You know you have true to form that you always love to support other people. You actually do have over 15 other contributors to this. So this really not only is this a wealth of information, it is one of its kind or hopefully the first of its kind coming straight to us from the pure original lived experience of Elo with a whole bunch. Of others. And it won an award from the Coalition of Visionary Resources in 2024 under World Spirituality. So even if you're just, you know, maybe you're not a bruja, maybe you're not identify as a witch, maybe you just want to know world religions. Pick up this book again. It should be in every library. I really believe so. Because changing, just like what you were saying about how a female may approach the world changing c ontext around how we view the world by looking through the eyes of other cultures beyond the English thinker, English speaker is going to broaden our deeper understanding of different approaches, like you said, to water, to dreams, to eggs, you know. And so congratulations on winning, winning an award. That's got to feel good. Yes, it's the first time that I won an award for a book. I won an award for an article for a magazine many years ago, like in 2014 or 2013. I wrote an article for a magazine and I won a prize for that. From that moment I have not won anything else and I always find myself like not trying to give. pity or something. But I'm always feel like I am in my corner doing my work. I don't feel like no. I'm not looking for the attention about the work, but I'm feeling like other people are always doing great stuff and I'm like, oh look, they are doing this or they are doing that and this person is doing this. This is so great. When they put me like nominated I was like, OK, this is something interesting. I'm not was really expecting. I I didn't even check the website. I know was expecting anything and. Somebody called me and they was like, are you joking? And then you won the award. And I was like, wow, I mean, I I love it because it's not Elohim won an award. It's an award for my cultures. It's an award to a queer gay man in America. We need more visibility. It's an award to my whole culture and all the other Latin American cultures, and it's an award for all the writers who collaborate in the book. And what I like more is that is how this will encourage and inspire other people, not necessarily Latin American, South African people, European people, Asian people, everybody else who feels like I don't find myself represented in peace, which for metaphysical community, hey, but he did it, I can do it too. And that is very encouraging and I would love to see that and I want to see more. Diversity. I want to see more community in a diverse aspect. I want to see women of different colors writing and teaching. I want to see something that I'm dying to see and I'm not going to rest to the moment that I see it. I'm not going to die to the moment that I see it. Is when I see that we have more metaphysical events organized for women because most metaphysical events in the paralanguage community are organized by white men and they're doing amazing events. That's not about them, but how many metaphysical events we have in the community organized and lead by women?We just have like two or three in the whole country. I want to see more of that. I want to see because every time that we talk about the witches, the representation is a woman. When we talk about healers, the representation is a woman. When we talk about brujas in the Latin American culture, the representation is a woman. But when you go to the place, the leaders are always men and the woman is. Sit down in the chair, learning what they should be teaching because they have a deeper perspective on the topic. Like why we need to have men talking about the goddess and motherhood. Things that we really don't understand because I should be teaching about the horned god and the male god because I understand phallic things. Because I have one. I am a man. Why should we teaching you about motherhood? Why I should be teaching you about the goddess? One day, many years ago, in my arrogance, I sit down to write a book about the goddess and after two chapters I was feeling like it's something all here. Obviously I never have a period in my life. I'm not never going to get pregnant in my life. So what I know about motherhood, I know anything about motherhood. I am a very good uncle. I think that I'm a very responsible, nice uncle. I'm very good with my nephews, but that not makes me an expert on motherhood or in goddesses. I'm just. A demotee like many others. They can be a priest for a goddess, but they will never be over a priestess of the goddess because they have a deep understanding about what is happening in their bodies. Trans women have more understanding of motherhood and about femininity and all the goddess than myself. So why we have all of these events talking about the goddess, about the witches, female in the community, when all of these events are leaded by men? Yeah, it's like nonsense, really. I love. I love that you're so grounded. That just makes so much, so much sense. You know, it almost makes me go, oh, maybe I should start inspiring these women to actually fulfill the dream of bringing everybody together, just like they do on holiday, but for a metaphysical event around the goddess energy. And yeah, that's a whole thing. I'm gonna keep my I'm not gonna die until then either till I see more of that. Years ago, I think that was 2009 because I have been around the metaphysical community many years before to come here. I was in Venezuela and what has this workshop about discussing the indigenous goddesses in Latin America and one of the I remember were four teachers and one of them was criticized publicly because the teacher was a trans woman and were talking 2009 in Latin America and we are not. And we are not so advanced socially in those aspects, you know And I remember sitting down because for me it's always whatever you want to say, probably you have something to say in there. So with all that respect, I'm going to sit down to listen to your talk and this trans woman were talking about the aspects of motherhood and about the goddesses and. Her perspective was entirely different from the other born woman in the room, but she had something that men don't have. She has the desire to be a woman. She had the desire to be treated unconsidered a woman. She had the desire to understand better motherhood. She had a desire to turn herself into a complete woman in a in a certain point of her life. And I was thinking we men don't have that desire. I identify myself like a gay man. I usually don't use too much the word queer because. Because I don't continue feel myself like queer. I continue being very old school, very stubborn, very capricorn. I'm a gay man. But having in front of you a person who identify like a woman, understanding motherhood from a different aspect, something that I don't wish to have. Because if you give me the option to be a woman, I will be very cold while just thinking, OK, I'm going to have a period every month. It's so much work. It's so much money that women need to spend on that. It's so much treatment, so much stuff that you need to buy. It's so much money. I don't have that money. But also, oh, you can have babies, but also, I mean, your body will change, your bones will change, your blood will change, your organs will change, your diet will change, your schedule to go to the restroom will change. And you need to do all of that. While you continue working and being mistreated for the whole society. And then after that you're going to have your baby in a hospital where probably the doctor will be a man who don't understand a 0% of what you are feeling and suffering. And you're going to have your baby and you continue working, doing the food, doing everything else that every man does. But also you have the responsibility to carry a baby, feed the baby, take care of the baby while your body at the same time is healing. Your bones are going back to their position. Your organs are trying to going back to their position. All your reproductive system is trying to go going back to their original position. And all of that is happening while you're taking care of the baby. While understanding I like a gay man, how about that? Absolutely nothing. But having a trans woman who is saying I will put my hands on fire just to suffer that. It's like, wow, she really channeled the spirit of the goddess. She really channeled the spirit of bringing a baby, a life to the world. And that's something that just woman and trans women can understand me like a gay man. I am gay, but I still not being a woman. I don't have that understanding and they will never have it. And it's very sad that in our community that we talk so much about the goddess, we need to empower the goddess. We have the goddesses and we use so much that that word. We continue to be lead by men and the women are behind the man doing all the work. Feels odd. It does. I love what you're saying. I mean, literally I was laughing because what you're saying is so true. And I love that you're calling it out because I am a mother and now I have grandchildren and you know, it takes, it takes a lot, but you know, we don't really. To have a baby and raise a baby. Yeah, yeah, yeahSo thank you for that. So I'm really excited. People, please pick up this book. You will not regret it. Even Elo goes back to it and looks up. So this is a book of recipes. It's a book of spells. It's a book of explaining things from originally South America, if you have roots. And you know, from one of those things and maybe you saw, oh, I remember my grandmother with an egg doing something. Maybe, you know, you can connect with, wow, there was more things that my grandmother was doing that I didn't understand why she was playing with that red string or what she was doing with that doll or that kind of a thing. Or even if you are just in witchcraft and you are not into Latin American stuff, something that I appreciate to have in the book is. I have more than 100 spells in the book and sometimes when I meet with circles, with coins, with other groups of magic and we're talking about this magic, I'm, you know, I'm very curious about what other people does. So I'm like, oh, you can put this charm bag under your feet or you can put this mirror next to your bed or you can put this oil ruin the door when you go to sleep. And they are like while you are sleeping, yes, because they are literally under not protected when you are sleeping, you are literally unconscious. You don't know what is happening to your body. And most witches have this philosophy that we work in the night. I personally work more during the day in my spell work, but a lot of witches culturally work in the night. So if you have any enemy, any person who have envy on you, they're going to do the spell work while you are sleeping, not while you're awake, because all your senses are awake and your spirit guides are awake. When you go to sleep and you feel entirely disconnected of the situation and your spirit guides are resting during those hours, you're totally putting away from any spell, so you need to protect yourself because you're going to be. Unconscious. People is like, oh, you have certain that. I mean what you're saying have sense and I'm like, yes, you need to over protect yourself. How do you put an altar in your bedroom and everybody look at me crazy like no, I don't want to have that energy in the room. It's just an altar for the dream and the sleep. It's for both things. You put a little altar in your room and you put some stuff in that representing your dreams or you want to dream with something. You put a crystal ball or some symbols representing what you want to dream. Or if you're looking for a lover, you put a picture of the lover in that altar. If you want to feel protected, you put something under your pillow. If you want to open chances for joy, you put a key under your pillow or inside of a pillow. If you feel that certain enemies against you doing some witchcraft stuff, you put a bottle with salt and black pepper and the picture of the person that is ahead of you and you put it on. On your bed and you go to sleep. So any spell coming from that person will race into your bed. It's so many things that you can do around your bedroom and so much sleep magic and dream magic that you can do. And you're not doing it because you assume, oh, I'm going to be sleeping. Well, you're going to be sleeping, but the magic will continue happening in there. Yeah, I have one last question, but a very important question for you. What is your view since you're bringing us this wonderful book, Dream Witchery, I what is your thoughts on it's a lot of it is that South American original, pure indigenous, South American, you know. Rituals. What if, like a white-bodied male who has no connection in their DNA, is it OK if they practice this?Is there a line or how do you what?How do you view that?I think it's a very interesting question. The line about cultural appropriation, which should be the term here, is when people try to literally appropriate something. Oh, I just learned this from the book, so I'm sending you that. I mean how many years of expertise you have to have visited the country to have practiced these kind of things. Because for example, I have this little altar on my this English word because we don't have this word in Spanish pantry. I have pantry and in the pantry I have a little altar for the gods of fortune. They come from the Japanese culture and they have a little altar because I visit very often the Chinese market and you know. The Chinese market, they have so much interesting stuff all the time, especially for witchcraft. They are amazing. But I visit so often that I'm just making friends with everybody and they they give me all the time some kind of gifts and all of these gifts. I put them together one day and I see, oh, they have so much stuff. So I give them the whole room and they put all of the symbols and amulets and the whole seven gods of Portland there. And I pray for them to give me fortune. I try to be respectful with them because. They are another they come from another culture. I don't understand that language. I don't understand that culture. I'm not giving to other people. Let me give you a class on the seven days, on the seven days of fortune because that's very inappropriate. When I have never been in Japan, I don't talk the language. I barely know about them. I didn't even pay for this item that they were given to me. I just tried to get something from them. I just tried to OK, I have it and I want to try it. I want to use it and put it in there. But I don't appropriate, I just appreciate it. When it's about different cultures, I think it's very important to respect from where this come, who teach me that, how I learn it, and how my perspective will give you certain insight. Because if I'm going to teach you, I don't know, frankly, what gives me a voice to teach you about that from where comes my expertise and what?Give me the qualifications. More important is how you being a customer feel comfortable paying for that or learning that from someone who probably don't have the years of expertise. Because I come from a spiritist lineage from the uncle of my grandma. We are a very long lineage of spirits in the family and it's a lot of spirits and animas. That I will be able to teach you to work with them, but I will not advise you to work with them because if you are not an expert, you know it is. I'm like you want to work with an animal. Are you really sure?Like you really need it because you have other thousands of options out there. And people say yes, OK, you carry your consequences because if you really believe in the magic and energy of what you are doing. We should be very careful and have some certain level of experience on this. It's like when people just buy a tarot deck and they just want to start doing readings the next week. You don't have an experience, you just read the manual to what people are going to sit down and pay to you. They're going to waste it because you don't have really the insight, the vision, the expertise, the clergy to give an an interpretation to the person and. Many times people will come to you literally trusting you, their life, their secrets, their personal stuff, very individual things that they don't say to other people, their mistakes, their hopes. And when whatever you're saying in your cards, you are playing with us. So you need to be very responsible with the energy that you're putting in there because they are the customers and they don't know how much expertise. Do you have? And that can goes in a very bad way. If somebody read from my book certain things, I would advise them, OK, put this into practice, try to learn exactly the whole context of the situation. And if you find yourself like, OK, I have expertise on this, I understand the language. I think this experience will work for me in this or another way. OK, I'm going to try to do it. That's OK if you are doing it. What I will not consider is if you go take something from the book, you just barely know it and you go to teach it to somebody else because you are misinforming people out of context and whatever they do, you will be the responsible person of the consequences of that. Because we are talking with the spirits, deities, animals, ancestors who are going to be getting mad, who are going to get very mad if you do something that is dis respectful to them. That's the reason why you many times find people who are like, oh, I was playing with a Wiha, nothing happened, but I don't have very good relationship with anybody for the past 12 years. Interesting. Why do you think it's that? You know, because everything that you do have a consequence in an energetic way in a certain point tomorrow in two weeks, in three years, in 15 years, what you will have the consequences of everything good and bad that you do because you are playing with energies that you many times have not seen. And you need to be very careful and responsible with that, especially if you're working with deities and a spirit who don't even understand your language when you're talking, right? RightI I love that. I love that. And just really spelling out appropriation versus appreciation. People feel free to appreciate. But don't appropriate, don't don't take it and and you have no connection to the ancestors or the deities and then you decide to charge somebody else and you're doing the service. I I think that that's, I think that that's a very. A very good line. But yet if there is something in the book that you start feeling that connection to and and you're you get into it and you learn and you do your consciousness and you want to try something out, that's perfectly fine. Is that kind of what you're saying? Yeah. For example, I have 8 years in the USA. I have read a lot about Marie Laveau from New Orleans. I have read three books. I have a certain collection of spells. I bought online certain things from her museum or store. I don't remember. And they have all of these items here. I have talked with. I have talked with experts on the topic. I have taken classes on the medical culture of Marie Laveau. I understand her English language. I understand. I understand her ancestry. I understand a little bit of the original language from the. From and Jamaica. But I'm not going to make a summon into Marie Laveau because she will be like, who are you little baby? You're playing here with like with fire. Why are you doing this to you? I'm not going to do that because I try to be a responsible person. I prefer to continue working with my animals, my spirits, my original, my own deities. Now I'm leaving the state of New York, so I work with the spirits, the local spirits, the local deities here. I try to be very responsible. I take the space to them. I try to to have their favor. I never asking for favors to them. I just give them offerings all the time in the patio. I put candles for them. I make bonfires for them every week. I make incense for them. I just try to receive their protection, their blessing so they don't feel uncomfortable with me because I understand that at the same time I continue being an outsider energy for them and they want their respect. I want their blessing in my magical work, but I will not try to appropriate their culture. I'm not going to sit down and say, oh, you know, I have almost nine years here, so I'm going to start making chants in a native language and I'm going to start working with the native space because probably the native space of here is going to find me like, OK, you are being an undecided here and you're crossing the line, so please stay away. I love, I love that. I love that. Especially, you know, being a Navajo indigenous of North America myself coming from that bloodline. And when I go and visit, you know, on the reservation, Navajo reservation, it's really powerful, the spirits that we that we work with and and those spirits aren't. Willy-nilly, they are really like, hey, you respect me or you know, so and a lot of ancestral thing and I think that you're saying the same thing. So Elo, we, I had just a wonderful conversation with you and listening to the way that you see the world, is there any last thing that you want to say to the listening audience? Be nice, be kind, be strong to matter. Both. Please both. Both Seriously. Be kind. Be nice in every decision that you take. Don't take anything personal. People don't do things to you. People do things. You choose if those things affect you or not. Be kind. Especially when I say be kind, I'm not saying be kind with everybody, even if they are brats with you. Be kind with yourself. That's much more important. Don't put yourself low for anybody. Because you're not responsible for the decisions that other people make with their lives and how they assume things. You just be kind with yourself because you matter a lot. Be nice, be wild, be authentic, be yourself. If some people don't like it, that's really not your concern. I love that. I love that. Well, thank you so much for being on the show. Thank you for your time. Oh, it's my honor. Congratulations on the book and the award. So thank you listeners for tuning in to yet another episode of Belief, Being and Beyond with your host granddaughter Crow. You can text the show if you go down or you can leave me a comment. Love to hear your feedback. Want to connect with the listeners?Like, subscribe and share. Please feel free to share this with anybody who you feel might. Like what we're talking about and we will. I love ya and we'll see you on the flippity flip.