Four Week Class Taught Online Via Zoom

Sundays, March 16 - April 6, 2025
1 - 3 PM ET (NYC Time)
$99 Paid Patreon Members / $125 General Admission

PLEASE NOTE: All classes will also be recorded and archived for students who cannot make that time

How do we maintain hope in challenging times? How do we cultivate resilience when our hearts (and spirits) are breaking? How do we move forward in the face of despair? Focusing on spiritual activism, this four-part series explores these and related questions. Each session combines lecture, discussion, practice, and application with ample time for Q & A. Participants will obtain an increased understanding of spiritual activism, as well as specific strategies to cultivate resilience, fortitude, and pragmatic optimism.

Designed to effect radical, innovative individual and collective change, spiritual activism represents a deeply embodied, radically holistic worldview and practice. Unlike organized religions, which are outwardly directed; rely on external rules, doctrines, and authorities; and often reinforce a monolithic, transcendent “Truth,” spiritual activism thrives on multiplicity, has its source partially within each individual, and anchors truth deeply within the physical world. And unlike conspirituality or other commercialized forms of spirituality, which focus primarily on the isolated individual and encourage spiritual bypassing and other forms of escape from contemporary social issues, spiritual activism insists on each individual’s radical interconnectedness with all existence and uses this interconnectivity to enact social justice.

This course is inspired by and grounded in the theory and praxis of spiritual activism developed and enacted by Gloria Anzaldúa, Chicana-tejana poet-philosopher, artist, and author. Although Anzaldúa did not coin the term “spiritual activism,” she developed an innovative, experientially-based approach that emerged directly from the most painful experiences of her life (e.g., debilitating health challenges, poverty, racism/sexism/homophobia, linguistic terrorism, and much more). Rather than downplay these negative experiences or deny their impact, Anzaldúa transformed them into a politics of spirit with actionable strategies to create a more equitable world for all. We look especially at Anzaldúa’s use of shamanic practices and esoteric wisdom traditions (including, but not limited to, alchemy, astrology, Sabian symbols, I Ching, Tarot, imaginal journeying, etc.) to cultivate resilience, build community, and in other ways transform hardship into wisdom and joy.

This deep dive into Anzaldúa’s spiritual activism and transformational practices invites participants to create their own unique forms of spiritual activism and gives them the tools with which to do so.

In Anzaldúa’s own words, from Light in the Dark/Luz en lo oscuro:

With the imperative to “speak” esta herida abierta (this open wound) before it drowns out all voices, the feelings I’d buried begin unfurling. Vulnerable once more, I’m clawed by the talons of grief. I take my sorrow for a walk along the bay near my home in Santa Cruz. With the surf pounding in my ears and the wind’s forlorn howl, it feels like even the sea is grieving. I struggle to talk from the wound’s gash, make sense of the deaths and destruction, and pull the pieces of my life back together. I yearn to pass on to the next generation the spiritual activism I’ve inherited from my cultures.

AnaLouise Keating is a professor of Multicultural Women's & Gender Studies at Texas Woman's University, teaching courses on Womanist Spiritual Activism, Gloria Anzaldúa, and related topics. Keating is the author, editor, or-co-editor of twelve books, most recently: The Anzaldúan Theory Handbook and Transformation Now! Toward a Post-Oppositional Politics of Change. Driven by the desire to bring esoteric/occult and Indigenous wisdom traditions into progressive social change and academic spaces, Keating's work focuses on Transformation Studies (Womanist Spiritual Activism, Post-Oppositionality, Invitational Pedagogies, and U.S. Women-of-Colors Theories), with a special emphasis on Gloria Anzaldúa, with whom Keating has worked since the early 1990s. Keating also teaches Yin Yoga and edits a book series, Transformations: Womanist, Feminist, & Indigenous Studies, at the University of Illinois Press. You can learn more about AnaLouise at analouisekeating.com.

Images: The Two Fridas, Frida Kahlo, 1939, Moses, Frida Kahlo, 1945