Earth Power, Cosmic Principles, and Elemental Wisdom: An Interview with Vanessa Ehecatl Santos
Seraphim Dream Love Temple, Vanessa Santos. 2020. Invocation of the Maries & Ancient Sea Dragon with Flower Essence Dosing & Blessing at Flower Head Gallery in Los Angeles, CA.
Vanessa Ehecatl Santos and their wide array of creative offerings are as spirited as the forces of nature. Their ethos feels like a much awaited antidote to the facile superficiality of most new age spiritualism, and thankfully for us, Vanessa is incredibly generous with sharing. On any given day you can find this Los Angeles native priestessing water healing ceremonies at the L.A. River, giving wild horses tarot readings, or making hand-painted altar cloths. It was within these liminal realms that we first connected in 2019 as I enrolled in their Decolonial Akashic Records mentorship program. Recently, we got together to chat about the mission of Terra Heaven Eco-Arts Education and their newest short story “Mayan A.I.,” published in 2021 within Earthbound: An Anthology of New Writings on Disability, Animals, and Earth by Pain Wise Press. You can read the full anthology here.
Hi Vanessa! Thank you for taking the time to talk with me. You’re well known on the ‘gram for your radically creative intuitive offerings. I imagine you don’t see your life experiences and your work as separate from each other, because they never really are right? This separation of what fits within a white-walled space and what doesn’t is a contemporary construct. How has your decades long study and practice within indigenous esotericism influenced the evolution of your paintings and ceramics?
Hi Star! An honor as per usual to get to chat with you! Thanks for asking. It’s totally true for me and I am sure for many others. There is no definitive line between my practice and my life as I see my whole spectrum of being. Mediums are projections I use to emerge aspects into the 3D realm. White cubes feel like spaces I need to cover urgently with the garden of my imagination and sometimes I find them jarring to my DNA (haha) which is probably why I became fascinated with indigenous farming and biodynamic farming. I found myself obsessively spending hours tracking down the way my ancestors would have made a clay vessel or a painting using natural pigments, or how they made and dyed textiles. It also became imperative for me to do this out of necessity when I had children and little income and still wanted to practice art.
So I leaned into my developing practices in a way that felt not only accessible to me, but also as a form of healing therapy. I started going to the river to gather clay and pit firing, using local elderberry to make dye, gardening in the way of my ancient elders, and working in my community to provide insight into these practices. My esoteric studies began pretty much at birth, in the form of extraterrestrial visitations, ancestor communication, fairy and elemental interactions and more. So in an attempt to alchemize these experiences I started to make “art“ about them and read every book I could find and again it came down to Earth Power, Cosmic Principles and Elemental Wisdom. Thus, I started to notice the only way to feel truly satisfied with the art and research I was doing was to marry esoteric Indigenous knowledge with my art. Everything I make now usually has to come from the Dream Realm or solidify my understanding of the Holographic Universe.
Seraphim Dream Love Temple, Vanessa Santos. 2020. Detail of installation at Flower Head Gallery in Los Angeles, CA.
Butterfly Dragon, Vanessa Santos. 2020. Digital Art Print.
Your dedication to reviving ancient practices is an achievement in itself, especially when we live in a world that has worked tirelessly to bury and erase this connection to our ancestors. And now you’re also expanding the creative earth-based wisdom you share with the IRL and virtual platform Terra Heaven Eco-Arts Education. Have you noticed a transformation in the young students that come to you?
The answer is yes. And I noticed that when students first come to me, they just need assistance in this world: gentle guidance and also affirmation that there is more out there than just the nearly whitewashed practices that are permaculture, herbalism, healing, arts, reiki, and alchemy. The study of anything that has been influenced by western culture seems to feel like it is not an inclusive space for individuals who feel othered or never quite fit into anything, and who have felt that way their whole life. It’s not just a recent development, but we can all identify with that aspect that makes being in the human flesh body so lonely. Also, what are the things we have in common with these ancient practices? And what did the ancient world look like? And why did it just implode? And what was that all about? And why are we being forced into these information systems which are completely nonsense in foundation, which force us to worship at the heels of money and power and stone buildings?
Artist made logo for Terra Heaven Eco-Arts Education.
The first thing that I noticed when students come to me after they're done with the education program is that they feel more connected to that thing that was always there. So really, I just help to open the door and teach things in the most approachable way. And whether it's hands-on building classes, energy healing, or a form of biodynamic gardening that also gives homage to the roots of Steiner’s philosophies [which are also indigenous practices of following the sun in the moon and listening to the ley lines and listening to the soil treating as the consciousness] we're looking at the power of all human electrical systems to heal. Learning has nothing to do with the practitioner and more to do with the transmission of knowledge. So students are not just students, but teachers too. They can feel empowered to continue on their paths. And I hope that what I see is correct and that the pupils who come to me feel more affirmed. And also have some sort of guide or compass that's internal, that strengthens, and that they will choose to further that within them and find things that continue to help them feel healthy—in the world that has been built around us that thrives on us being unhealthy. As they leave a course, I hope they're encouraged to explore and experiment with foundational teachings.
In 2021, you published a short story titled “Mayan AI” in the anthology Earthbound where the main character Heiki’s body is “incompatible with the current structures of post late capitalism and post-industrialization…poisoned land, water, food, contaminated-anything made her sick, and, as a ‘New Age cripple,’ there were some days when she could not leave the bed that easily.” Disability tends to be boxed away as a private thing that individual people experience. Your story connected together the sentient realities of many different timelines, more than human beings, and ecosystems. What was your experience like of writing it?
Writing “Mayan AI” was really hard. I was flaring. I was still bed-bound three days out of the week minimum. I had my children with me and I was going through a divorce, and I had just left Ireland the year before. But I found resistance inside my body because I knew I was writing about something so close to my heart that it would also catapult me into a level of healing and reflection that was not exactly comfortable. So I had to really face some places that were obscure. [The story was channeled to me from the spirit realms]. And also, it just felt channeled. I wanted to provide insight into what it was like to be a sick mother and to be a person of color in Iowa, in the Midwest, where the story is based. But all these beings just flooded in. I was also reeling from what I experienced at the visitation: after going to giant rock, I woke up with these burn marks on my back. All these transmissions, weird dreams, and signals were kind of streaming through me and all I could do was just let it come out.
“Mayan AI” is autofiction. And it seems sci-fi but you know, environmental poisoning is something everyone seems to feel is likely in the future but it's already happening right now. The water is already unsafe to drink, the air is already unsafe to breathe. The chemicals that we use on a daily basis are mutagenic and changing our DNA. How about we make the people who created these toxins take account for the world that they brought upon us? I'm not a freak because I have these mutated DNA strands which will allow me to push certain chemicals from my body. In fact, I'm a mutant. And I'm okay with that. I think that many people like me need a voice.
Photo of Vanessa Santos by Luisa Smith.
I hope that within those small chapters people can find certain things to relate to. And yeah, the beings that were coming in were relaying information that tied into the visitations I received as a young baby––some of my first memories about these blue beings. It was fun to write the story that I felt like had been in my mind, my psyche, and my spirit as a seed for so long. I also really want to thank Olivia Dreisinger of Painwise Press, who is also disabled too, for believing in me and being so patient with me and my flare-ups. I just felt really held and seen. And it was very cool to be able to write and be accepted for just telling my story, but also for being allowed a space to channel what ones come in whether I liked it or not.
How is the future of Earth connected to justice for disabled folx? Is there a way that the art world can shift to meet these evolutions?
It's really discouraging. I think that agriculture––the way it is now––is completely anti-Earth and anti-life, and the way we build, the way we look at art, the way we try to contain it in nice pristine spaces, and the way it feels elite that I'm always thinking to myself, “Wow, how did these people make these giant sculptures?” Or how did they do this? Or how have they been able to do what they do for so long? Well, nine times out of ten, they are already somehow in the institutions. It seems like a circle. And if there was some kind of art that was really groundbreaking, I feel like it would have the potential to heal so many things. But I guess art spaces can start to look at artists who are being supported by the systems that they're already a part of, or maybe just taking chances on artwork that speaks of spirit. And that isn't just pleasing aesthetically, but that actually does something for the earth. Because right now, there's a lot of cool stuff out there. But at the end of the day, it's only serving a system which, although it may generate temporary inspiration or temporary feelings, basically has no lasting foundation in anything.
Right now, the future seems pretty dangerous for autoimmune, sensitive people. And art shows rarely have accommodations for us or acknowledge us to even exist. I can't even go to some events because I don't meet all the local requirements. I'm not able to get vaccinated due to the fact that I am so ill that my medical team has advised against it. And it's kind of like people like me don't exist or something. I've managed to not get any type of COVID since the first outbreak, but it's rough out there. And I would just like for the world to acknowledge people like us exist. But that would mean totally restructuring everything that capitalism, imperialism, and every type of -ism is not willing to look at. We're always judged based upon our work and what we produce. But we also, as people with disabilities, have these very vivid and strong connections to death and to the bridge that allows us the type of wisdom and insight and our imaginations are wide open. And maybe because we've been forced to lay here and think and connect with things in the unseen realms. I would just like to bring the unseen into the scene. But we'll see. So I hope that answers your question. And I would like so many things to happen, but obviously, it starts with my own work. And I guess that's where I'm gonna focus: how I can continue my work with the bees and the land project and come up with certain technologies that are earth-based that I have in mind. Hopefully, I’ll get to put them into use and they'll actually be of service to Earth and Earthkeepers of this world.
Vanessa Ehecatl Santos aka Ancient Pocket is an Interdisciplinary Indigenous Disabled Artist (Ceramicist, Textiles, Illustration, Painter and Printer)/ Art Educator, Writer and Nature Educator/ Herbalist. They specialize in Indigenous Esoteric Studies and are also an Akashic Tarot Reader, Reiki Master, run an all ages Experimental Unschool called terraheavenecoarts.com and co-curated seraphimdream.com. They are a multidimensional artist, weaver of spirit technologies and new healing realities, wise teacher, and healing arts channel. Under the project Ancient Pocket, they regularly communicate new visions of sacred earth, downloaded directly from planet GAIA.
Star Catherine Feliz is an interdisciplinary artist and medicine person born and raised in Lenapehoking, aka New York City, with roots in Ayiti, aka Dominican Republic. Entangled across the mediums of sculptural installation, time-based media, and book forms, their work explores earth-based pathways for disarming apparatuses of violence and their cycles of trauma. They are currently an MFA candidate at the University of California, Los Angeles in the department of Interdisciplinary Studio. After almost ten years of studying and practicing community-based herbalism, Star is currently sharing their medicine under the self-started project of Botánica Cimarrón. Their formulas are unique stories that weave together the past, present, and future of Caribbean folk healing to bring living systems back into alignment.