Queer Pagan Interview: Tomás Prower (Part 1)

Photo: Ray Garcia Photography. Source

Hi, pornies! I hope you are having a wonderful weekend. Do you remember when I spoke about Tomás Prower's Morbid Magic? Well, today I want to share with you the first part of an interview I had with this man. I had to split it in two so it's easier for you to read it because, first, I had several questions, and second, he had so many interesting things to say I wouldn't skip a part! I hope you like it. ^^

1. Which came first into your life: Magic or Queer Identity?
Oh, gosh… tough question… It’s hard to say, really. I’d probably have to say magic, though. Children have such a wonderfully open reception to magic and non-logical forces of the world (not illogical, mind you, just non-logical). Queer identity and sexuality, for me at least, came later, during puberty when sexual desire comes more strongly into the psyche. As kids, we know so little of all the boxes we have to contort our identities into so that other people can label us and know where we do and do not belong (as well as to tell ourselves what we definitively are and are not). So, I think I had to have been more in touch with magic and the wonder that surrounds us before I had any notion of myself as a queer person (let alone what “queer” even was).

2. How would you describe your spiritual path?

Never ending! (laughs). Truth be told, I rarely seek specific things out, preferring to just wander into them. Something will unexpectedly catch my attention and resonates with something ineffably deep inside me, and I begin to learn as much about it as I can and then try it out for myself. As I learn more and practice more, I become exposed to MORE knowledge about this or that, which ignites that same captivating resonance in me, and the process begins all over again, again, and again.

So, for some concrete context, I was raised Catholic (even went to Catholic school from kindergarten ‘til high school graduation), and in order to academically learn about Catholicism in school, I had to learn about Judaism. Then from that, I learn about something in Jewish Hermeticism. And that leads me to meditation, and then Buddhism, and then Hinduism to understand Buddhism, and on and on. And not wanting to have just an armchair understanding of different spiritualties, I try to live their teachings as authentically as I am able while actively learning about them.

I just keep walking the path of spirituality with no preference of destination, and so by not fixating my gaze directly toward the “finish line” all the time, I get to really look closer at all the wonderful landscapes around me as I just keep on walking. I just put one foot in front of the other and try to learn as much about my current surroundings as possible all along the road.

3. Do you feel your sexuality has played a role in it?

Not really… and I know that sounds SO disappointing coming from the author of Queer Magic (laughs), but it’s true. You see, I have never really been a fan of labels. Labels serve the purpose of being able to consolidate yourself into an identity so that you can feel like you belong to something, anything, some sort of comforting collective bigger than yourself… but it also cuts you off from everything else. When you say you are X, then you are simultaneously saying that you are NOT everything that X isn’t. I just don’t think it’s worth it, really. Who wants to limit themselves from unending possibilities just so I can say that I fit in with a certain tribe? No thank you; I’m confident in myself and I like myself enough to live comfortably without labels.

In fact, I think androgynous, non-binary people who transcend all of society’s labels are the most magical people in existence. They can be all things because they refuse to label themselves as anything. Even many shamanic tribes around the world are the same way; the shamans who defy gender and sexuality labels are often seen as the most powerful since they have no self-imposed limitations of labels. So, for me, my sexuality is more of a verb; it’s something that I do, but I don’t really consider it part of my personality or have it dominate worldview. Thusly, it doesn’t have too strong of an impact on my magical practice. I want to be open to everything, so why limit myself in my own mind with labels?

4. Although you grew up in a Catholic family, you decided to have a different practice, but why? Was there any particular reason?

Just curiosity, mostly. I think I was simply jaded by Catholicism, not that I hated it or ran away from it in any way. When something is all you know and you hear about it every day (remember, I went to Catholic school for 13 of some of my most formative years), it just becomes boring. I had heard all the stories a thousand times, and it just became repetitive.

I think we as humans are always drawn to the new, the different, and for me, that included religion and spirituality. I wanted to explore something different, something that would excite me, and so I began the “path”… not that I knew I was on any such path, of course. I just pursued the different, searching for excitement, the thrill of it all.

5. Your first book was about La Santa Muerte. What made you become a writer and start with Her instead of any other deity?

My first published book was about la Santa Muerte (winks). I had written a number of fiction books for years before anything got published (which, in hindsight, is a blessing since it really allowed me to cut my teeth and hone narrative techniques that made La Santa Muerte and all subsequent published books so good! I look back at my first books I wrote, and I think to myself, “Thank God these didn’t get published, they’re so bad!” But we all start somewhere, and I’m happy I made those mistakes in private and not for the world to read).

But more directly to the question, nothing made me WANT to become a writer, it’s just who I always was. Writing is my inherent talent because it is that thing that I was born with that will forever interest me, and since it always interests me, I am always doing it, and that which we always do we become ever better at it. Again, I was writing long before I was ever published, and that’s when you know… when you purposefully set aside time in your busy day to do a creative task without monetary incentive or praise, just because you enjoy it and the creation within you needs to come out, then that is a natural passion that, if nurtured, can become a natural talent.

But this all ties back together to the other part of the question because I had been writing for so long that I got to that point where I wanted to start making a career of it. I had proven to myself that it wasn’t a passing interest and that it’s what I love doing most. Even back then, I was highly aware that publishing is a business, and publishers publish books that sell, not necessarily books that are good (if they do happen to be good, all the better).

So, I knew I needed a “hook” that could help make it “sell” in order to get the publishers interested. I had been deep in the Santa Muerte discovery part of my spiritual journey at this time, and I found her absolutely fascinating. So, I added her into a fiction story that I pitched to Llewellyn (because I didn’t really know what Llewellyn was), and got an interesting rejection letter from them.

Essentially, it stated that they don’t do fiction books, but they had been looking for an authentic Latino devotee of la Santa Muerte to write a non-fiction book about her. It’s magical looking back at it all, really. I was at the right place at the right time. Call it coincidence or whatever else you want, the Universe just aligned. Anyway, I said “yes”, and the rest is history.

So, it wasn’t really a conscious choice of me “choosing” her over any other deity. I had been working with her and just knew she’d be an excellent hook for a fiction book. She’s the one who got me into the business if I really examine it. So, maybe she chose me. . . I have no window in the mind of the Divine, but who knows?

6. In your second book, Queer Magic, you take the readers across many cultures to explore how queerness and sexuality have been perceived. Do you think this book changed you? Would you expect it to change the readers?

Change the readers? I hope so! That’s the big goal of this book, really. I wanted to expose as many people as possible to the untold histories and mythologies of queer people and divinities that have existed around the world throughout time. It’s by no means the end-all-be-all of queer mysticism and history, but it is a springboard to open people’s minds into understanding that there is more out there than they’ve been “traditionally” taught. And hopefully they are inspired to go beyond the book and want to learn more on their own.

Has it changed me? I’d say yes, but not in the way to which I think you’re alluding. I had been studying, learning, and seeking out “queer” magic, mysticism, and mythology for many years on my own. I am a HUGE history nerd, and I’ve been doing this queer research on my own for my own enjoyment and fascination for a long, long time. It’s only because of the success of the La Santa Muerte book that I got the opportunity to make a book out of all these histories and mythologies I’ve been living with for years.

So, it didn’t change me in any mystical way, but it certainly did in a practical way. It was my first critically successful book, and once you become a critical success, the way the world sees you changes (even if you don’t see yourself as any different, even if you are not any different).

You see, La Santa Muerte had been a commercial success, but it didn’t really “wow” the critics. Queer Magic, however, was a critical success (in addition to its commercial success). It started winning all these international awards, getting high-praise reviews by respected people in the magical, queer, and academic communities, and all these other “high-brow” review sites. It was weird because now that I had their “blessing” (these strangers with clout), suddenly I was “someone”.

It’s all really awful the way the “professional” critics have to sign off on you before you can be taken seriously. It changed nothing about me, but it did change the way the world saw me. Suddenly, I was getting more interviews with bigger and more prestigious blogs/shows/etc. Suddenly an influx of people started to “really” follow me on social media. Suddenly, I became what the cool kids call an “influencer” (though I think influencer culture is ridiculous). The way the world saw and listened to me greatly changed because of Queer Magic… and that changed the way I could now (and had to) interact with the world. It’s all so silly, but it happened, and I had to change to survive.

7. You are very interested in death and queerness. Do you think they could be related in any sense? Maybe something to do with otherness?

Oh my God, yes! I love the hidden and the taboo subjects that don’t get talked about. Queerness and death are two things most people don’t want to talk about….and when they do, it’s never in earnest, it’s in some convoluted roundabout or uselessly simplistic way. “Oh, grandpa’s just sleeping.” “Oh, the two ladies living together across the street are just really good friends.” No one REALLY talks about this stuff, and that makes it enticingly mysterious.

And the two are definitely related. Y’know, in a lot of cultures around the world, queer people are seen as the people who proceed over funerary rituals, and quite a number of death deities have prominent queerness traits and inclinations… so maybe there’s some unknown mystical link between queerness and underworld magic.

Personally, I think it does have to do with that “otherness” theory. Queer people throughout history have been hard to label and have been seen as being able to transcend what is “normal” by the cis-hetero majority. So, when that majority looks at these people who can go beyond the binary of man/woman, masculine/feminine, top/bottom, they make assumptions. They deduce that if queer people can transcend those boundaries, then they can also probably transcend the boundaries between the physical world and the spiritual world, the world of the living and the world of the dead, and so on. It’s all a bunch of stereotypical assumptions placed on queer people by non-queer people, but maybe there is a more of a cosmic truth in there below the surface…

Come back tomorrow to read Part 2 (goes live at 4:00 AM PDT)! ^^ But in the mean time, you can follow Tomás: