As we move closer to Pride Month, my thoughts turn to those who are no longer with us to celebrate. How far we have come in my lifetime, it seems. When I was a boy there was no expectation that queer people would gain equal rights, let alone be able to marry whomever we chose. But through hard work, and a lot of sacrifices, we have come a long way, tenuous as those rights may seem today.
When I was writing my most recent book, The Satyr’s Kiss, an exploration of Queer Witchcraft, I included a bit of my personal life and those queer people whom I met along the way who were fighting for queer rights and acceptance in our political and spiritual circles. In my youth, when life was perceived as being forever, and having never really considered the possibility of losing the people I cared about, I missed out on opportunities to really get to know certain people before they were gone. But I am blessed to have known them and to have been the recipient of their lived wisdom.
Paper flower lanterns floating in a line at east festival. Image credit: Envanto Elements.
My Witchcraft, like that of so many others, draws inspiration and strength, in part, from the ancestors. For most white people in the United States this is easy enough to trace, at least to a degree. Often, our family trees can be traced back to before our families moved to this continent. For people of color, however, this is not so easy. Immigration, racism, and slavery obliterated the records of non-white families, giving rise to the designation of “Black” as a cultural identifier, when most white families could say “Irish” or “German” or “Swedish” and so on. (This is why “white” is not a cultural group, but Black is.)
Another wrench is thrown into the works when we focus on queer people, because our ancestors are not necessarily in our biological families. In fact, very often we are the only queer person in our own families, making the concept of a chosen family all that more important to us. This has given birth to the coded euphemism “family” to mean another queer person. This is an important concept upon which to focus, as this demonstrates how we collectively view family, which in turn affects how we might view the ancestors.
I call the queer ancestors the Rainbow Dead. This term specifies their special place in our collective histories as well as in our spiritual practices. Ancestors need not be of our blood in order to be potent allies in our lives and work. It just takes us getting to know them, and a recognition of the work that they did to lay a foundation upon which we today may walk.
Indulge me, if you will, as I tell the stories of a few who meant something special to me, but who are no longer with us. Friends and allies who were instrumental in their own way in helping to shape my queer Pagan consciousness and who now, through my work, have a renewed opportunity to touch others as well. Here, join me in honoring a few of the Rainbow Dead.
Kalyn Smith-Tranquil’son, for the brief time he was in my life, was the gayest man I knew. If you said, “bye,” he’d respond with “homo.” “Straight ahead?” No; “gayly forward,” instead. He was somewhat older, only by 11 years, but the difference was accentuated by the sheer lack of older queer men left alive, our community having been decimated by the scourge of the AIDS crises in the preceding years. He was a queer elder to me. He had a breadth of life experience I could only imagine. He was thin, somewhat animated with his mannerisms at times, and spoke with just a bit of a lisp.
He was also Pagan, and a scholarly one, at that. He would speak to me on many occasions about his work uncovering queer elements and practices from the ancient world and was the first person to share with me the idea that in antiquity our kind were not merely tolerated but celebrated. He encouraged me to pursue my writing and even gave me the opportunity to write and lead a trance journey based on queer themes, for the spiritual order of which he was a member. This gave me my start in teaching the Craft and for that I will always be grateful.
He passed away in 1994 from AIDS-related complications at the age of 34.
Claudia Lorie was a queer woman who was in a heterosexual marriage, a fact that often erases one’s bisexuality to outsiders. She was happily married and had a lovely daughter. She was nearly the age of my mother and used to frequent the metaphysical shop where I worked. We would spend hours chatting about various spiritual and magical points of interest and it was she who first told me about the myth of Asushunamir, the androgynous being of light created by the god Enki to rescue Ishtar from the Underworld. Together we brainstormed and this was the inspiration for an article I wrote about the mythical being. A few years later she moved from California to New York, and while I would hear from her from time to time through Facebook, I never saw her again. She died from cancer in 2019, surrounded by her family and friends.
These were older people in the community that took an active role in spreading insight and awareness to other queer folk. They were embodying the sacred role of elders, taking me under their proverbial wings and helping to steer me into my best possible future. But it wasn’t always the elders who played this particular role in my life.
Eddy Gutiérrez [courtesy]
Another who stands out to me is my friend Eddy Gutiérrez. Aka Rev. Hyperion, founder of the Unnamed Path, Reiki Master-Teacher, initiate of Palo, as well as an initiate of Regla de Ocha, known as Santeria, and now declared a saint by the different occult and spiritual groups in which he worked. Unlike the others mentioned above, Eddy was five-years younger than me, and we bonded in a different way than I did with my elders. We were peers, and had many late-night conversations about magic, spirits, and of course all the hot gossip of who was sleeping with who. He was involved in many different communities and projects and his unexpected death from an undiagnosed heart condition left those communities reeling. After his death, many would report spirit visitations (myself included) and even including some with whom he had never met in life. But those encounters always left those people enriched, justifying, in my eyes at least, the saintly status bestowed upon him. He was not my elder, but I honor him as one of my spiritual ancestors and count him amongst the Rainbow Dead.
These are just a few of those people who left us too soon, but who left a lasting legacy, at least for me. They touched my heart in different ways and their legacy reaches now through me and all who they touched. They are spiritual ancestors, and we stand tall on their shoulders.
I always felt that there could have been so many more things for us to share, and talk about, and do. But we get what we get: a lifetime. Who knows what that translates to in terms of years? We think we are invincible – that our friends are invincible – until it is tragically proven that this is not the case.
With this comes the realization, that we too shall be the ancestors one day. And in fact, that work is happening now… it has been happening for years, in every conversation we have with others, every time we share our light and extend a helping hand, we forge those bonds and project our hopes and intentions for a better future, a future that we ourselves may never see, but is being built, brick by metaphorical brick, though our actions today. Look around: who in your life is a shining light of queerness? Ask them questions. Have them tell you their stories. And also, share your own stories. Don’t hold back! We need all of us, working hand in hand, to weave together the tapestry that is our cultural history. We are all becoming the queer ancestors of tomorrow. Let us be worthy of it.
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