Il Giorno Dei Morti - Italian Day of the Dead + reclaiming ancestral veneration
At this time when the veil is thinnest, please join two Italian QTs, Owen Marciano and Alex Iantaffi, for a discussion on ways we can reclaim and update our traditional ancestral veneration practices, followed by a ritual to honor our beloved dead. All are welcome!
This is the first in a series of discussions and rituals about reclaiming queer spirituality, which are open to everyone, and which will help us begin building community, raising money, and interest toward a queer pilgrimage to the Sanctuary of Montevergine for Candlemas in February, 2027.
Online - Sliding Scale $0-25 - Nobody turned away for lack of funds!
Owen Marciano is a queer, transmasculine, disabled artist, and a Sicilian-American settler on Dakota and Anishinaabe land, in so-called Minneapolis, MN. Owen is attentive to the ways his Sicilian and southern Italian ancestors created spiritual and emotional protection together, particularly through folk art & the expression of earth-based spiritual traditions. Owen’s work is an interrogation of his personal ancestry as he remembers and adapts traditional southern Italian ways of spiritual healing to this time and place. Since the summer of 2019, Owen has focused on a spiritually-centered, multidisciplinary art practice in tandem with a divination practice as a Tarot reader under the name Nonna Terra.
Alex Iantaffi is a disabled, neuroqueer, trans / gender defiant, bi, polyamorous, Italian author, therapist, speaker, educator, cultural worker and witch. They emigrated first to England as a young adult, and later to Dakota and Anishinaabe land, initially to where is currently known as Minneapolis, and then settling in so-called Duluth, MN. Alex has been involved with the Reclaiming tradition since 2004 as a co-creator, weaver, organizer, ritual artist, teacher, initiate, and initiator. Alex is also a Feri and a Queer Spirit initiate, and practices some of the Southern Mediterranean ancestral practices they were brought up with, such as the tarantella, and devotion to the Black Madonna. They believe that healing is collective, and deeply rooted in embodiment, mystery, and belonging to ancestors, culture, language, lineage, and place. However, Alex knows in their bones that many of us who are trans and queer have been displaced from such belonging, and might have scattered further away than where we were planted. They hope to keep co-creating spaces where we can explore and grieve this as needed, as well as dream and nurture new potentialities for healing, pleasure, embodiment, and belonging in community.