Melissa Cynova 
Have you ever seen someone’s profile on Instagram and couldn’t stop looking at it, and then the next thing you know it’s 3 in the morning and you’re down a serious rabbit hole and start navigating their feed like a fucking ninja to avoid liking a post from 2016 and kind of feel like you know the person but there’s no way you could but you still kinda want to hang out and send them an interview request even though you legit only know them from stalking?
Just me?
So, Liz Abbott is the High Desert Witch who runs High Desert Witchcrafts. Not a fan of boxes, but ‘if pressed she would describe herself as a Jungian Bodhisattva Satanist Witch”. Right up my alley. (Weirdly the tenets of Unitarian Universalists are similar to those of Satanism)
Her photographs show a joyful, real, beautiful life that is far removed from mine in some aspects, but right at home in others. She offers readings at her blog, and can be found on Instagram, and on, presumably, the high desert.
(And also below in the questionnaire)
(Which – total warning here – you’re going to have a crush on her when you finish reading it. Don’t say I didn’t give you a head’s up)
xo Lis
LFT Questionnaire
1. What you appreciate the most in your friends.
Compassion, growth, perspective, laughter, empathy.
2. Your idea of happiness.
Hiking on a warm day with my family. Forgetting a new season of Black Mirror (or something) was dropping and noticing on a rainy day with time to binge watch in bed with my husband. Working in my garden while listening to an audiobook.
3. Your idea of misery.
The thought of life if I were to somehow lose my husband and son. George R Martin dying before the completion of Winds of Winter. Coachella (ha! but im totally not a crowd person).
4. Where would you like to live?
On the Gulf side of Costa Rica in an Earthship.
5. Your favorite colors and flowers.
Black and Purple are my favorite colors. Datura, Cosmos, Sunflowers, Lavender, Foxglove, and various varieties of flowering Tobacco.
6. Your favorite poets.
-Sandra Cisneros
-Clementine von Radics
-I’d also love to quote one of my all-time favorite passages, from a Robert Penn Warren poem.
“All items listed above belong in the world
In which all things are continuous,
And are parts of the original dream which
I am now trying to discover the logic of. This
Is the process whereby pain of the past in its pastness
May be converted into the future tense
Of joy.”
7. Your heroes/heroines in fiction.
-Julia from The Magician’s Trilogy (book NOT the show).
-Scully
-Deanna Troi
-Starbuck
-The Ka-tet of 19
-Arya Stark
-Bellis Coldwine
-Linda Belcher
8. What role does divination play in your life?
Years ago, when I was flailing through life, as you do in your early 20’s, my sister forwarded me an email she had received from an ethnobotanist. It was a response to her asking some questions about, perhaps, entering that field of study. It was long and beautiful and poetic, and the last few sentences were something along the lines of; You just have to remember that you remember. The lives you’ve already lived, the ones you will live, in dimensions you can’t fathom, where you’ve progressed through a variety of lessons, where you know nothing, are in you, somewhere. Your answers and guidance are there if you can find a way to remember. Remember that you remember.
Something about that resonated with me (perhaps because I’d gone through a bit of a Daoist phase in high school coupled with my mother believing me to be an Indigo Child) and I have always carried it in my heart. I use divination tools daily (mostly tarot cards, occasionally diving pendulums) to have a conversation of sorts with myself, who I have been, who I will be.
I use the same tools with my clients as I find it the best way to access what they’re “remembering self” is trying to communicate
9. Your heroes/heroines in real life.
Zsuzsanna Budapest
Jex Blackmore
Teal Swan
Janelle Monae
Roxanne Gay
Rupaul (One of my all-time favorite live-my-life-by-quotes is from Ru. “I try to always come from a place of love, but sometimes you have to break it down for a mother fucker.”
10. What is your present state of mind?
Heavy. Everything feels very heavy right now. Not in a good or bad sense, but just heavy.
11. What is your favorite tarot deck or divination tool?
I use either The Night Sun or Deviant Moons decks in almost all my readings.
12. Your favorite songs?
Currently:
-Asido- Purity Ring
-Silence – Marshmello
-Acid Tounge- Jenny Lewis
-SZA- The whole Ctrl album (she is a GODDESS)
13. What is your favorite word?
Vellichor – which is a made-up word from The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows (http://www.dictionaryofobscuresorrows.com) that is meant to describe the strange feeling of wistfulness you get in a used bookstore.
14. What is your least favorite word?
I love words, but if I had to pick one, I would say “literally.”
15. What sound or noise do you love?
When I can hear my husband and our two-year-old laughing together from another room is by far my favorite sound. They have the best laughs.
16. What sound or noise do you hate?
I have an intense aversion to the sound of wool-socked feet creating friction on a carpet.
17. What turns you on?
Confidence mixed with vulnerability. People that feel sexy in their skin. People that are empowered by their sexual selves.
18. What turns you off?
Frat bros and MAGA hats.
19. What is your favorite curse word?
Growing up in Maine, the rural slang for “Jesus Christ” was “Cheese and Rice,” I think that’s pretty great. Also, fuck.
20. If heaven exists, what would you like to hear God say when you arrive at the Pearly Gates?
“Yikes, how’d you get up here? Petey, Paul, a little help over here guys…. guys!?!”
